^-■^ 



S-- V 









THE HISTORY 

OF HISTORICAL WRITING 

IN AMERICA 



J: FRANKLIN JAMESON, Pn. D. 

rUOrtSSOU or history in BK-^v ivh. i-k ,i rv 




BOSTON AND NEW YOKK 
IIOUGH'loN. MUM IN AND COMrANY 

1891 



3'/ 



Copj-riRht. 1891, 
Br J. FRANKLIN JAMESON. 

All riyhts rttervtd. 



The Rir^ti'ie Press, CambHdft, Mast., t'. 5. A. 
PrlDtod by U. 0. Uoa(hU» Jt Com fnj. 



PREFACE 



These four Lectures upon the history 
of historical writing in America were read 
before public audiences in the hull of the 
Johns Hopkins University in January and 
February, 1887, and in that of Brown Uni- 
versity in February and March, 1880. The 
tliird and fourth were printed in Englische 
Studien in 1888 and 1889, and the f.>ur, 
after a considerable revision, appeared in 
the New England Magazine in 1891. 

BHOWN DNIVKRBITT. TROTIDKNCE 

May 2, 18*JI 



CONTKNTS 



PAOI 

I. TiiK Historians of thk Skvkhtf.entii 

Ckkturt 1 

II. TlIK HlHTOUIANS OF THE ElGHTKKNTII Cf.N- 

TfUT 42 

III. From THE Revolution TO THK Civil War . HO 

IV. SiNCF. TIIK Civil Wak 122 



THE HISTORY OF HISTORICAL 
WRITING IN AMERICA. 



I. 



THK HISTORIANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

The history of liistorical writing; in the 
Enj^lish colonies and in the United Stiites 
fiills, naturally, into four periods ; and this 
alike whether we take as the basis of our 
classifieation its eharacteristics as historical 
liteniture, or its characteristics as historical 
science. In the first jH'riod, the heroic age 
of discovery and settlement, such histor}' as 
we liave is the work of the Argonauts them- 
Hjlves, who, with litth* eonseiousness of au- 
thorship, still less of membership in a liter- 
ar)' profession, wrote down, in simplicity of 
oiiud, accounts of things which they had 
seen and in which they had themselves 
borue a great part. This jKriod is roughly 



2 IIISTOniCAL WRITISr, 

cciuivaKnt to the seventeenth century. l'jK)n 
this followcil two or three generations of 
what \\v nii*;lit call epigonal historiogniphy, 
btvirii)^ cloar marks of a colonial or provin- 
cial origin, yet often careful and scholarly, 
and mainly devoteil to investigating and re- 
cordin*; with pious care the achievements of 
those who had preceded. Tlie third periml, 
lasting from the Revolution to the Civil 
War, was one in which history shared, in 
common with other departments, the effectiJ 
of the general effort toward the creation of 
an indejwndent American literature. Dur- 
ing this, the classical period of our histx>ri- 
cal writing, the favorite subjectis were j»or- 
tions of Euroj>ean history. Since then we 
have had a marked improvement in metluHl 
and scholarsljip ; hut the dominant impulse 
of the fourth jwriotl has been towanl a 
closer, and esjwcially a broader, study of 
our own history. It is with these four peri- 
ods that the chapters of this book are re- 
sjKJctively to be occupied. In general, only 
the most imjwrUint writers of each will be 
considereil ; and no effort will be made to 
relate at length the picturesque and inter- 
esting details of these writers' lives, — not 
from any such disdain of the pi(tures<pic as 



/AT AMERICA. 3 

nuulern stiulents of history arc 8iipi>oseil to 
iifTfct, but hcH-aiiHo tlio subject is not tlie 
lives ami personalities of Aineriean hist«>ri- 
ans, but the development of American liis- 
toriojjjraphy. 

In the time of the lii*st julvcnturers anil 
settlers, some historical literature of value 
had already been produced by the nation 
from which they sprang, — chroniiles like 
those of Hall and Ilolinshed, collections 
like those of Stow, and a few more notible 
performances. Lord Bivcon's '^ Henry VIL," 
Knollys' '' Historic of the Turkes," Foxs 
"Martyrs," and the great fmgment of a 
"History of the World" which llaleigh 
had comiH.sed during his long imprisonment 
in the Tower. But no one of these was in 
any way the nuKlel of our earliest historians, 
whose puri)oses were (luite different. The 
purjwse of one class was to awaken iinmedi- 
aU» inU'rest in a given colony, and stimulate 
immigration int4) it by accounts of what liad 
been done there ; to this class belong Cap- 
tiiin John Smith and Captain Edward John- 
son. The mmlel i»f some of them may be 
seen in the pages of Hakluyt, in the Re- 
lations and Narratives of voyagers. The 
other class, of which (Jo-... ,..„• r.r.i.lfonl and 



\ HISTORICAL WRITISG 

Govenior Winthrop are the chief exam- 
ples, iH^lit'vinj^ tlu'inselves to have In'oii con- 
ceriU'd in iiu'iuorablc begin iiinjjjs, wnjte for 
the benefit of jHwterity ])ermanent memorials, 
wliieli tliry (li«l not intend to 1h3 publishe<l 
till aft4r their deaths. It is to thesi* four, 
as best deserving, among our writers of the 
si'venteenth eentury, the name of historian, 
that the present ehapter is to be mainly 
given. 

At the beginning at once of our colo- 
nial history and of American historical lit- 
erature stands the burly figure of Caj»tain 
John Smith : and yet ho stands somewhat 
apart from l>oth. There is no need to re- 
count at length the stirring events of his 
early life, — how, after wandering over 
much of EurnjH; and the Levant, he took 
service against the Turk, slew three Turk- 
ish cavaliers in single combat before the 
walls of Hegall, was caj)turcd and sold as 
a slave, was l)efriended by a noble lady at 
Constantinople, was sent to serve Jis a sla\^i3 
in Crim-Tartary, and escaped with many 
adventures ; but it is plain, from the nature 
of tht'in, that he l)elonged in charact4'r to 
the generation that had just passed away, 
lie had more in common with Hawkins and 



jy A\fERICA. •*> 

Frobishcr ami Drako, with those who rc- 
imlsed the Arinathi, aiul souj^ht Khh)ra(h), 
aiul braved the northern ice, and ^* singeil 
the King of Spain's beard," with all the 
freshness and buoyaney and adventurous- 
ness of the Kliziibethans, than with Eliot 
and P} ni and Selden, with the sobriety, the 
seriousness, the prosaic strenuousness, which 
had bej^un to overspread and to characterize 
the England of James I. It was these traits 
of character that made him really unsuited 
to much of the work which now needed to 
be done in the American settlements. He 
was a colonial adventurer in a generation 
of colonial founders. At the beginning, the 
services of such a man were invaluable, and 
the colony probably owed more to him than 
to any other man during the thirty nu»nths 
that he 8i)ent in it. But, the initial work 
once done, another sort of talent was needed 
if the colony wius to be, not abortive, as the 
Eliz:ibethan colonial exiwriments had been, 
but a strong and prosi)erous community, 
fcmnded on sol)er and humdrum agriculture 
and trade : and so the shrewd London mer- 
chants of the Virginia Company were not 
wrong in making no further use of Smith. 
The same <|ualities shine conspicuous in 



6 HISTORICAL WRITING 

the writings of Smith, and mark him off 
from the rest as, though the precursor, yet 
not the father of the American historical 
writers. His writings breathe the spirit 
that invests the pages of Hakluyt and Pur- 
chas with so surpassing and so imperishable 
a charm, not that which has made our colo- 
nial history dull and our nation great. He 
writes, by preference, of encounters, of ex- 
plorations, of opportunities for present gain, 
as one who is directing a band of adventur- 
ers, not as one who is thoughtfully laying 
foundations for the gradual growth of a 
mighty state. He does not lack serious- 
ness, but he is more a knight-errant than a 
man of business. But if both his role and 
his attitude are those of a knight-errant, 
bearing in his veins the enthusiastic blood 
of the sixteenth century, but set to do the 
sober tasks of the seventeenth, he was in 
the main a worthy knight, fearing God af- 
ter the simple, untroubled fashion of the 
earlier time, without overmuch sojourning 
in Meshec and Kedar, serving faithfully and 
energetically his king and the company, giv- 
ing good government, ami doing with his 
might what his hand found to do. He 
wrote of all this with keen zest and enjoy- 



IN AMERICA. 7 

ment, and with not too much of modesty, or 
of mildness toward his adversaries ; but when 
was a knight-errant ever modest or concilia- 
tory ? 

The strictly historical works of Captain 
John Smith are but two in number. The 
first is a brief tract of thirty or forty pages, 
entitled " A True Relation of such occur- 
rences and accidents of noate as hath hap- 
ned in Virginia since the first planting of 
that Collony, which is now resident in the 
South part thereof, till the last returne from 
thence." The second is the extensive book 
entitled " The Generall Historic of Virgi- 
nia, New-England, and the Summer Isles," 
a brief continuation of which was printed as 
part second of his " True Travels, Adven- 
tures, and Observations." His other books 
are mostly of a descriptive character : they 
have a value as historical material ; they are 
not themselves historical writings. The 
" True Relation " was written in Virginia 
about the end of May, 1608, when the colony 
had been in existence a little more than a 
year ; it was sent home by Captain Nelson in 
the Phoenix, and was published at London 
in August. It is only a pamphlet, and a 
somewhat hastily prepared one at that. It 



8 HISTORICAL WRITING 

is mainly occupied with tlie personal adven- 
tures of Smith himself, the exploring ex- 
peditions which he conducted, and his deal- 
ings with the Indians. Not much is told us 
of events at Jamestown. While that little 
is valuable, in the paucity of eye-witness ac- 
counts of the first year's doings, its value is 
much diminished, or at least rendered doubt- 
ful, by the fact that it is everywhere seen to 
be colored by Smith's hostility to certain 
fellow-members of the Council. Which was 
right in their frequent quarrels is hard now 
to determine ; but no one can fail to see 
that Smith was too censorious of the ac- 
tions of others, too vain of his own, to be a 
historical witness of the highest degree of 
merit. 

The same animosities are to be found, 
unallayed after a period of sixteen years, 
in the " Generall Historic," published in 
1620, the book which forms Smith's chief 
title to be numbered among the Ameri- 
can historians. Or rather, it exhibits these 
animosities widened into partisanship in a 
more important conflict, and applied to the 
events of a greater number of years. Com- 
ing home in 1609, and never afterward suc- 
ceeding in getting employment from the 



IN AMERICA. 9 

company, Smith seems to have extended his 
resentment againt those who had ruled the 
colony with him to their successors, and 
eventually to the managers of the company. 
In the last years of James I., the Virginia 
Company's proceedings reflected the conflict 
going on in the country at large, the minor- 
ity being of the court party, the managers 
belonging to the opposition. Smith takes 
many opportunities in the "Generall His- 
toric " to attack them, to accuse the mis- 
management of the colony since he left it, 
and to lament that his advice was not rather 
followed and his services employed. "I 
know," he adds, " I shaU be taxed for writ- 
ing so much of my selfe ; but I care not 
much, because the judiciall know there are 
few such Souldiers as [those who] have 
writ their owne actions, nor know I who 
will or can tell my intents better then my 
selfe." 

The book which the doughty captain had 
prepared with so resolute a disregard of all 
natural impulses toward self-e\ffacement was 
proposed, as the records of the Virginia 
Company show, as early as 1621, but pub- 
lished in 1624, in a volume of two hundred 
and fifty pages folio, embellished with sev- 



10 HISTORICAL WRITING 

eral quaint and well-engraved maps. Smith 
was, after all, the author of only about 
seventy-five pages out of the two hundred 
and fifty ; and of these seventy-five, nearly 
seventy comprise mere reprints from three 
of his descriptive books. Of all the rest 
he was but the editor or compiler. The 
composition of the book is in fact singular. 
The first book, treating of the English voy- 
ages to Virginia before 1607, is entirely a 
compilation or patchwork of previous nar- 
ratives. The second book is a reprinted de- 
scription of Virginia as it was in 1607. 
The third book is a republication, with some 
variations, of a body of narratives by some 
of the original planters, which had been 
edited by one Dr. Simonds, and published 
in 1612 ; they cover the thirty months of 
Smith's stay in the colony, and are from 
persons belonging to his faction. What he 
himself has contributed to this division is 
limited to the insertion, here and there, of 
verses more remarkable for sententiousness 
than for beauty, and, it must be added, the 
addition of striking adventures not men- 
tioned in the " True Relation," and a gen- 
eral heightening of the picturesqueness of 
his own career. The fourth book, giving 



IN AMERICA. 11 

the history of Virginia from 1609 to 1624, 
is almost wholly a compilation, or rather a 
transcription, of the narratives of residents ; 
the fifth, treating of the history of the Ber- 
mudas, is wholly so. Finally, to make 
Book VI., entitled " The Generall Historic 
of New England," he reprints his " Descrip- 
tion of New England," 1616, and "New 
England's Trials," 1620, inserts Edward 
Winslow's "Plantation in New England," 
and, with a few interesting pages on the 
present estate of New Plymouth, closes this 
remarkable historical mosaic, of which it 
I may almost be said that what is historical is 
I not his, and what is his is not historical. 
But herein, also, we must confess, he has 
been the precursor of many of our histori- 
cal writers, not all of whom have enumer- 
ated as frankly as he the victims of their 
scissors. 

Nothing has been said, thus far, of the 
story of the saving of Smith by Pocahontas. 
The historical student who is not entirely 
steeped in haughty professionalism, who 
would himself " strictly meditate the thank- 
less Muse," yet wishes to temper that austere 
cult with a regard for the unscientific pre- 
ferences of Amaryllis and Nesera, will cer- 



12 HISTORICAL WRITING 

tainly hesitate long before assailing the most 
famous of the few romantic legends of our 
early colonial history. And yet it appears 
that, in spite of a dozen novels and perhaps 
a gross of poems that have gathered about 
it, the legend must go. A whole chapter 
would hardly be long enough for a full dis- 
cussion of the arguments, but in brief the 
case is this. Not only is there no mention 
of such an episode in the full account of his 
Chickahominy expedition which Smith gave, 
a few months after he went upon it, in the 
" True Kelation," but everything there in- 
dicates a most friendly reception by Pow- 
hatan ; nor do any of his companions men- 
tion an adventure so striking. It first ap- 
pears in print in the " Generall Historic " 
of 1624, interpolated as one of those em- 
bellishments of his friends' accounts, to 
which allusion has been made. It appears 
that Smith, in 1616, hinted at such a ser- 
vice performed by Pocahontas, in a letter to 
the Queen, written when Pocahontas was in 
England. In short, the probability is that 
he invented the episode in order to connect 
himself in a picturesque manner with one 
who had lately been attracting so much at- 
tention. One need not stop to defend his- 



IN AMERICA. 13 

torical criticism for destroying so pretty a 
legend, for historical criticism brings to 
light two stories of heroism that are true 
where it removes one that is false ; but per- 
haps we may more easily be reconciled to 
the loss of this particular romance if we 
remember that, pictures and poems and 
story-books to the contrary notwithstanding, 
the real Pocahontas was only ten years old 
at the time of the alleged rescue. 

To turn from Captain John Smith to 
Governor William Bradford is like turning 
from " Amadis of Gaul" to the "Pilgrim's 
Progress." The worthy governor of Ply- 
mouth Plantation had slain no Turks, had 
undergone no romantic adventures, had 
been signally befriended by no princesses 
or noble dames, whether heathen, Moham- 
medan, or Christian. But if fortune denied 
him interesting adventures, — except in so 
far as the high purposes of the Pilgrim 
Fathers and the permanent importance of 
their work invest all that they did with in- 
terest, — it did not deal so with his book. 
The story of its vicissitudes is a curious one. 
It was well known to historical scholars that 
Governor Bradford had left behind him a 
manuscript history of Plymouth Plantation. 



14 HISTORICAL WRITING 

Some extracts from it had been given in 
print by certain historical writers of the 
hundred years succeeding his death, the last 
being Governor Hutchinson, in 1767. It 
was supposed that Bradford's descendants 
had lent it to the Eev. Thomas Prince, the 
noted historical scholar of Boston, and that 
Prince had deposited it in the New Eng- 
land Library which he was forming, in the 
tower of the Old South Church. During 
the first year of the Revolutionary War, 
while Boston was occupied by the British, 
that church was, as is well known, used by 
them as a riding-school. After that time, 
nothing was heard of the precious manu- 
script of Bradford's history, until, one day 
in 1855, a local antiquary most unexpectedly 
found a trace of it. While reading a small 
English book by Bishop Wilberforce on the 
history of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in America, he came upon certain passages 
which were identical with some of the ex- 
tracts from Bradford given, as already men- 
tioned, by American writers of the last 
century. The foot-notes of the book de- 
scribed these passages as taken from a manu- 
script history of the Plantation of Plymouth, 
in the library of the Bishop of London at 



IN AMERICA. 15 

Fulham. The discovery was communicated 
to one of the leading members of the Mas- 
sachusetts Historical Society, and a corre- 
spondence was entered upon. The manu- 
script in the bishop's library was proved to 
be that of Governor Bradford's long-lost 
history, and was copied, and printed in 
1856. How it came to be in the Fulham 
library no one knows ; nor does any one 
know how to get it back from there. 

However, we have the printed text, and 
a most important and interesting work it is. 
Governor Bradford's qualifications for pre- 
paring such a history are manifest. From 
the first year of the settlement down to the 
time of his death — during a period, that 
is, of thirty-six years — there had been but 
five years in which he had not been elected 
governor of the colony. He had been among 
the earlier fugitives to Holland, and was, 
therefore, personally cognizant of the his- 
tory of the little community in the period 
preceding its transfer to America. During 
most of the long period of his governorship 
he had had in mind the preparation of such 
an account, of which it appears that he wrote 
the beginning in 1630, and the end in 1650, 
and had been saving and collecting letters 



16 HISTORICAL WRITING 

and documents important to his purpose. 
He liad, therefore, the most entire fami- 
liarity with the history of the colony, and 
time enough to insure deliberation and 
care. Moreover, he had not only a thought- 
ful mind and a high degree of intelligence, 
but was even, like so many of the early 
American governors, a man of some scho- 
larship. Cotton Mather says of him : " He 
was a person for study as well as action ; 
and hence, notwithstanding the difficulties 
through which he passed in his youth, he 
attained unto a notable skill in languages ; 
the Dutch tongue was become almost as 
vernacular to him as the English; the 
French tongue he could also manage ; the 
Latin and the Greek he had mastered ; but 
the Hebrew he most of all studied, because, 
he said, he would see with his own eyes 
the ancient oracles of God in their native 
beauty. He was also well skilled in history, 
in antiquity, and in philosophy ; and for 
theology, he became so versed in it that he 
i\ ^ was an irrefragable disputant against . . . 
errors. . . . But the crown of all was his 
holy, prayerful, watchful, and fruitful walk 
with God, wherein he was very exemplary." 
It may illustrate the cast of Bradford's mind 



IN AMEBIC A^ 17 

to repeat what he himself has said in regard 
to one of these studies. Eight manuscript 
pages of Hebrew roots with English equiva- 
lents, and of Hebrew exercises, have been 
found, written in his handwriting, and pre- 
faced with these remarks : " Though I am 
growne aged, yet I have had a longing de- 
sire to see, with my owne eyes, something 
of that most ancient language, and holy 
tongue, in which the law and oracles of God 
were writ ; and in which God and angels 
spake to the holy patriarchs of old time ; and 
what names were given to things, from the 
creation. And though I cannot attaine to 
much herein, yet I am refreshed to have 
seen some glimpse hereof (as Moyses saw 
the land of Canan afarr of). My aim and 
desire is, to see how the words and phrases 
lye in the holy texte ; and to discerne some- 
what of the same, for my owne contente." 

But whatever scholarship the excellent 
governor may have had, he does not obtrude 
it into his book, which has nothing of the 
pedantic manner so frequent in the seven- 
teenth century. He writes a plain, sober, 
and straightforward account, the evident 
care and accuracy of which make it one of 
the most valued sources for our colonial 
1* 



18 HISTORICAL WRITING 

period. His narrative covers the history of 
the colony down to the year 1646, at which 
point it was left unfinished. It embraces 
the events which led, in England and Hol- 
land, to the exodus of the Pilgrims, the now 
familiar tale of their early sufferings and 
achievements, the occasional controversies in 
which they were involved, their negotiations 
with other colonies, their troubles with the 
London merchants, and their correspondence 
and relations with the body whom they had 
left behind at their departure. The phrases 
in which that departure is described are 
memorable : " So they lefte that goodly and 
pleasante citie, which had been ther resting 
place near twelve years ; but they knew 
they were pilgrimes, and looked not much 
on those things, but lift up their eyes to the 
heavens, their dearest countrie, and quieted 
their spirits." Such words as these, which 
have been often quoted, do not stand alone 
in the narrative ; with all its sobriety, it is 
clothed in many passages with that exquisite 
and singular beauty of expression which a 
close familiarity with the English translation 
of the Bible has so often bestowed on writers 
of little literary art. Of such is the follow- 
ing, written in appreciative commemoration 
of his companions' fortitude. 



IN AMERICA. 19 

'^ But hear," he says, " I cannot but stay 
and make a pause, and stand half amased at 
this poore peoples presente condition ; and 
so I thinke will the reader, too, when he well 
considers the same. Being thus past the 
vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in 
their preparation, . . . they had now no 
friends to welcome them nor inns to enter- 
taine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no 
houses or much less townes to repair too, to 
seeke for succoure. It is recorded in scrip- 
ture as a mercie to the apostle & his ship- 
wraked company, that the barbarians shewed 
them no smale kindnes in refreshing them, 
but these savage barbarians, when they 
mette with them, . . . were readier to fill 
their sids full of arrows then otherwise. 
And for the season it was winter, and they 
that know the winters of that cuntrie know 
them to be sharp and violent, and subjecte 
to cruell and feirce stormes, deangerous to 
travill to known places, much more to serch 
an unknown coast. Besids, what could they 
see but a hidious and desolate wildernes, full 
of wild beasts and willd men ? And what 
multituds ther might be of them they knew 
not. Nether could they, as it were, goe 
up to the tope of Pisgah, to vew from this 



20 HISTORICAL WRITING 

willdernes a more goodly cuntrie to feed 
their hops; for which way soever they 
turned their eys (save upward to the hea- 
vens) they could have litle solace or content 
in respecte of any outward objects. . . . 
Let it also be considered what weake hopes 
of supply and succoure they left behind 
them, that might bear up their minds in this 
sade condition and trialls they were under. 
. . . What could now sustaine them but the 
spirite of God and his grace ? May not 
and ought not the children of these fathers 
rightly say : Our faithers were Englishmen 
which came over this great ocean, and were 
ready to perish in this willdernes ; but they 
cried unto the Lord, and he heard their 
voyce, and looked on their adversitie, &c. 
Let them, therefore, praise the Lord, because 
he is good, and his mercies endure forever. 
Yea, let them which have been redeemed of 
the Lord, shew how he hath delivered them 
from the hand of the oppressour. When 
they wandered in the desert willdernes out 
of the way, and found no citie to dwell in, 
both hungrie and thirstie, their sowle was 
overwhelmed in them. Let them confess 
before the Lord his loving kindnes, and his 
wonderful works before the sons of men." 



IN AMERICA. 21 

It is a curious good fortune by which we 
happen to have accounts of two of our 
earliest colonies, those of Plymouth and of 
Massachusetts Bay, written by the two men 
who had most to do with managing the af- 
fairs of each in the earliest period. More- 
over, the two governors and historians were 
in some degree typical of the two colonies 
whose history they helped to make and to 
write. The Separatist colony and the Puri- 
tan colony were widely different. The his- 
tory of the Pilgrim Fathers is full of suffer- 
ing, of poverty, of humility, of patience, and 
of mildness. It is the story of a small and 
feeble enterprise, glorified by faith and hope 
and charity, but necessarily and always lim- 
ited by the slender resources of the poor 
and humble men who originated it. The 
founding of the Bay colony, on the other 
hand, was less a colonial enterprise than a 
great Puritan emigration. It was organized 
by men of substance and standing, supported 
by the wealth of a great and prosperous 
body of the English nation, and consciously 
directed toward the high end of founding 
in America a great Puritan state. And as 
Massachusetts was to Plymouth Plantation, 
so, in many respects, was Governor John 



22 HISTORICAL WRITING 

Winthrop to Governor William Bradford. 
He was, in tlie first place, a man of much 
more prominent position, lord of the manor 
of Groton, one of the attorneys of the Court 
of Wards and Liveries, a magistrate, and 
a man of considerable wealth. But he was 
also a man of a broader, larger, and more 
philosophic intellect, as well as of a more 
regular and extensive education. In short, 
he had more thoroughly those powers and 
acquisitions of mind which would fit one 
to direct worthily the larger concerns of a 
strong and important state, and to describe 
worthily its origin and early development. 
For beauty of character, it is hard to give the 
preference to either governor. Long posses- 
sion of great power in a community resolute 
to defend its independence and suj)press 
dissension with a high hand, strong, self- 
reliant, and intolerant, never succeeded in 
marring the exquisite sensitiveness of Win- 
throp's conscience, or affecting the gen- 
tleness and sweetness of his deportment. 
Scrupulosity of conscience we perhaps ex- 
pect to find in a Puritan, but the second 
point is worth a little more attention. It is 
worth while frequently to insist that harsh- 
ness, and sourness, and gloom were not 



IN AMERICA. 23 

characteristic of all periods of Puritan his- 
tory alike. Puritanism in New England, 
as in Old England, went through three dif- 
ferent stages, — the period of origin and 
growth, the period of conflict, the period of 
decline. The Puritanism which was sat- 
irized in " Hudibras," and which fell with 
Richard Cromwell, was not the Puritanism 
of the civil wars. Still less was it the 
Puritanism of Milton's earlier years, — of 
"Comus" and "L' Allegro " and "II Pense- 
roso." In that earlier time, Puritanism had 
not dissevered itself from the cheerfulness 
and spontaneity of the Elizabethan period, 
but had simply added to them, on the one 
hand a greater degree of moral eai*nest- 
ness, and on the other hand a greater zeal 
for innovation in church and state. So it 
was in New England. The well-known and 
most amusing diary of Chief Justice Sewall 
shows us Puritanism as it had come to be 
among the men of the third generation, — 
Puritanism gone to seed, grown narrow and 
harsh and petty, and rapidly becoming mun- 
dane and Philistine. But before this, and 
before the preceding generation of conflict, 
and before the hardships of life and the 
wildness of nature had begun to depress 



24 HISTORICAL WRITING 

men's minds to the level of the awful right- 
eousness with which we are so familiar, 
there was a Puritanism of a less unlovely 
type ; serious and strict, but not uncheerf ul, 
nor insensible to the delights and beauty of 
life. Of such Puritanism John Winthrop 
was the type and the exponent. In him 
Puritanism is seen at its best, not only car- 
ing (and compelling others to care) for 
what was in its opinion true and honest and 
just, but also observant of whatsoever things 
are lovely and of good report. The poetic 
imagination which "led him to prefer, of all 
books of the Bible, the Song of Solomon, 
the depth and beauty of his religious experi- 
ences, the exquisite tenderness of his letters 
to his wife, the mildness of his efficient rule 
as governor, all show us a nature singularly 
attractive. He was, in short, a gentleman ; 
not in the spurious sense of one whose an- 
cestors and connections have been highly 
distinguished for being related to each other, 
but in the better sense of one who combines 
with a noble character the additional graces 
of a perfect sweetness of temper and a per- 
fect refinement of manner. 

I have enlarged upon Winthrop's personal 
characteristics because they were an impor- 



IN AMERICA. 25 

tant factor in the composition of his book. 
Of a historian of our day, writing of these 
things, this need not be true. But in the 
case of one who writes of the genesis of a 
state of which he has been the foremost 
founder, the study of his personality is a 
matter of much consequence to the critic, 
not only because it helps to understand his 
book, but also because it helps to understand 
the movement which he headed. Milton, in 
a famous passage of the Apology for Smec- 
tymnuus, reminds us "that he who would not 
be frustrate of his hope to write well here- 
after in laudable things, ought himself to be 
a true poem, . . . not presuming to sing 
high praises of heroic men or famous cities, 
unless he have in himself the experience and 
the practice of all that which is praise- 
worthy." John Winthrop did have within 
himself these things. They shone out plainly 
in the acts of his public life, and they are not 
less conspicuous in the history which he left 
behind him. 

The " History of New England " has the 
form of annals, or even, at first, of a journal, 
begun by the governor on board the Arbella 
on the day when he set sail from England in 
1630. It is continued to the winter of 1648, 



26 HISTORICAL WRITING 

a few months before his death. Naturally, 
many matters of small moment are treated 
in it, — minor doings of the governing body 
and the churches, moving accidents, remark- 
able providences, and so forth. But the 
narrative is never undignified and never gos- 
siping. And when events of greater impor- 
tance to the colony, or deliberations and dis- 
cussions involving the essential principles of 
its policy, fall to be described, we could 
hardly desire a guide more impartial, more 
informing, or more thoughtful. Together 
with the actions of the rulers their reasons 
are set before us, and set before us with 
a high-minded confidence and a philosophic 
breadth of view that leave nothing to be 
desired. Once in a while occur really admi- 
rable reasonings and statements in matters 
of political philosophy ; while the absence of 
passion and intolerance and pettiness is very 
marked. The early years of the colony were 
a time of strong party feeling and of bitter 
dissensions; yet Winthrop never takes the 
opportunity of private writing and posthu- 
mous publication to set down aught in mal- 
ice against any of his opponents. Of the 
chief among them, Sir Harry Vane, he says 
that at all times " he showed himself a true 



IN AMERICA. 27 

friend to New England, and a man of a 
noble and generous mind." The severest 
thing that he says of any of them, so far as 
I know, is found in some words of grave 
and temperate disapprobation which he uses 
with regard to Governor Bellingham, and 
even here he does, not fail to suggest what 
excuse he can for Bellingham's factious ill- 
temper. Speaking in one passage of some 
of these disagreements, he says : " Indeed, it 
occasioned much grief to all the elders, and 
gave great offence through the country; and 
such as were acquainted with other states in 
the world, and had not well known the per- 
sons, would have concluded such a faction 
here as hath been usual in the council of 
England and other states, who walk by poli- 
tic principles only. But these gentlemen 
were such as feared God, and endeavored to 
walk by the rules of liis word in all their 
proceedings, so as it might be conceived in 
charity that they walked according to their 
judgments and conscience, and where they 
went aside it was merely for want of light, 
or their eyes were held through some temp- 
tation for a time, that they could not make 
use of the light they had ; for in all these 
differences and agitations about them, they 



28 HISTORICAL WRITING 

continued in brotherly love, and in tlie exer- 
cise of all friendly offices each to other, as 
occasion required." And the story of the 
governor's own reconciliation with Dudley 
shows that, so far as he himself was con- 
cerned, he has not overstated the case. 

Winthrop's narrative, like Bradford's, was 
left in manuscript at his death, and came to 
be a part of the New England Library in 
the Old South Church. Its subsequent vi- 
cissitudes were curious, though not so remark- 
able as those of the " History of Plymouth 
Plantation." After the Revolution, two of 
the three volumes of the manuscript were 
found in the possession of the elder branch 
of the Winthrops in Connecticut, edited, 
very superficially it must be said, by the re- 
doubtable lexicographer, Noah Webster, and 
published in 1790. In 1816, the third vol- 
ume was discovered in the dormitory of the 
Old South Church. The Massachusetts His- 
torical Society entrusted the preparation of 
a new edition of the whole to James Savage. 
Before he had accomplished the collation of 
the second volume of the manuscript, that 
volume was destroyed by a fire which broke 
out in his office. The first and the third 
volumes are now in the library of the soci- 



IN AMERICA. 29 

ety ; for the second, our text is that of Web- 
ster's edition. 

He who is seeking a characteristic pro- 
duction of the traditional Puritan should 
without doubt resort to that of the fourth 
and last writer upon our list. Its very title 
is characteristically Puritan. It was an age 
of quaint title-pages ; but nowhere were they 
quainter than in the books of the New Eng- 
land Puritans. "New England's Teares for 
Old England's Feares," "New England's 
Salamander Discovered," "New England's 
Jonas cast up at London," "The Heart of 
New England rent at the Blasphemies of 
the Present Generation," and, for a longer 
example, that of John Cotton's famous pam- 
plilet, "Milk for Babes, drawn out of the 
Breasts of both Testaments, chiefly for the 
Spiritual Nourishment of Boston Babes, but 
may be of like use to other Children," — 
such are the names of some of the early his- 
torical and controversial tracts of New Eng- 
land. Among them all, few have a quainter 
title than that which the author of the his- 
torical book before us bestowed upon it, — 
" The Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's 
Saviour in New England." The London 
publisher saw fit to alter this upon the title- 



30 HISTORICAL WRITING 

page to " The History of New England ; " but 
in the head-lines of the pages the title chosen 
by the author is followed throughout. A 
history of New England the book is not, but 
rather a history of Massachusetts down to 
the year 1651. Among the New England 
histories it has the distinction of having been 
the first to appear in print, for it was printed 
in London in 1653 (dated 1654). It was 
printed anonymously, but its author is known 
to have been Captain Edward Johnson, se- 
lectman and town clerk of the town of Wo- 
burn in Massachusetts. In Governor Win- 
throp, as I have declared, we may see 
Puritanism at its very best. But the elite 
of humanity are nowhere in a majority. A 
better representative of the average Puritan 
of the middle class is doubtless Captain 
Johnson. He was a Kentish farmer, and 
probably also a shipwright, who came out in 
the same fleet with Winthrop in 1630. A 
dozen years later, he was, in company with 
half a dozen others, one of the founders of 
the new town of Woburn. It is interesting 
to note that, of his dozen companions in this 
undertaking, one, John Sedgwick, afterward 
became one of Cromwell's major-generals, 
while another rose in the naval service of 



IN AMERICA. 31 

England to be Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves. 
But the stout Kentishman, having put his 
hand to the plough, chose to remain in the 
town he had helped to plant. He had 
always an important part in the affairs of 
the town, was chosen selectman nearly every 
year, was again and again elected to repre- 
sent the town in the general court or legis- 
lature of the colony, acted as town clerk, 
and was captain of the train-band. He was, 
therefore, more or less concerned in the pub- 
lic affairs in the colony, but never had a 
leading part in tliem. Though he was a 
more prominent, a wealthier, and perhaps a 
more intelligent man than most of his fellow- 
citizens, we may well enough take him as in 
most respects a type of the rank and file of 
the original settlers. This is in the main 
what gives its value to this first printed his- 
tory of Massachusetts. 

Captain Edward Johnson was far inferior 
to Governor Winthrop in breadth, in culture, 
and in fineness of spirit. The hot zeal, the 
narrow partisanship, the confident dogma- 
tism, which characterized so much of Puri- 
tanism, have in him a striking example. No 
one could be more remote from the cool, 
skeptical, examining temper of the modern 



32 HISTORICAL WRITING 

historian, who hears, and smiles, and deducts, 
and balances. All Johnson's opinions are 
self-evident to him. He sees no good in the 
lords bishops. He will not listen to the 
servants of the chief priests ; rather, his first 
impulse is to draw a sword and cut off 
Malchus' ear. He is full of that narrow 
Hebraism which, when it prayed, kept open 
its windows toward Jerusalem, but closed 
every other avenue to the soul. To hew 
A gag in pieces before the Lord is to his 
mind not the least attractive of religious 
duties. With him the church militant is 
more than a metaphor. The life of the col- 
ony appears to him most frequently in the 
guise of an armed conflict; he hears in its 
story the noise of battle, the thunder of the 
captains and the shouting, and in vehement 
canticles summons the Israel of New Eng- 
land to the help of the Lord against the 
mighty. Old Testament phrases are his 
delight ; he speaks, throughout, the dialect 
which the French wittily call the patois de 
Canaan. To the Puritan zeal he adds the 
Puritan superstition. Everywhere the hand 
of the Lord is seen protecting his saints; 
his wonder-working Providence appears not 
only in the general movement of the events 



IN AMERICA. 33 

narrated, but in every detail of the fortunes 
and misfortunes of individuals, so that his 
pages bristle with special providences. His 
account of one of these may be quoted : — 

"To end this yeare 1639, the Lord, was 
pleased to send a very sharp winter, and 
more especially in strong storms of weekly 
snows, with very bitter blasts; And here the 
Reader may take notice of the sad hand 
of the Lord against two persons, who were 
taken in a storme of snow, as they were 
passing from Boston to Roxbury, it being 
much about a mile distant, and a very plaine 
way. One of Roxbury sending to Boston 
his servant maid for a Barber-Chirurgion to 
draw his tooth, they lost their way in their 
passage between, and were not found till 
many dayes after, and then the maid was 
found in one place, and the man in another, 
both of them frozen to death ; in which sad 
accident, this was taken into consideration 
by divers people, that this barber was more 
than ordinary laborious to draw men to those 
sinfull Errors, that were formerly so fre- 
quent, and now newly overthrowne by the 
blessing of the Lord, .... he having a fit 
opportunity, by reason of his trade, so soone 
as they were set downe in his chaire, he 

2* 



34 HISTORICAL WRITING 

would commonly be cutting of their haire 
and the truth together ; notwithstanding 
some report better of the man, the example 
is for the living, the dead is judged of the 
Lord alone." 

This last is a redeeming touch. It cannot 
be said that it is not in some degree charac- 
teristic. With all the illiberality and harsh- 
ness of his theological zeal, the man was not 
unkindly. Something of the spirit of Win- 
throp appeared in even the less enlightened 
of those who followed him ; Johnson's Puri- 
tanism was not all unlovely, and at any rate 
it was far from ignoble. Let us be just to 
the Puritans. Doubtless they would not be 
agreeable neighbors. Doubtless they would 
have hanged or burned a considerable num- 
ber of us, and banished all the rest ; for in 
these degenerate days hardly any one is 
orthodox according to their standards. Yet 
let us remember that they did possess, in 
an eminent degree, those virtues that spring 
from confidence in a high purpose and a 
mission felt to be momentous and sacred, 
from belief in character, from belief in en- 
thusiasm, from belief in strenuous effort. If 
the bit of quaint superstition which has been 
quoted is characteristic of Johnson and his 



IN AMERICA. 85 

companions, not less characteristic is the fol- 
lowing passage, in which is exhibited in an 
instructive manner the attitude of the strug- 
gling colony toward its cherished college. 
Describino- the eaeer desire of the colonists 
that learning should be adequately main- 
tained among them, he says: "And verily 
had not the Lord been pleased to furnish N. 
E. with means for the attainment of learning, 
the work would have been carried on very 
heavily, and the hearts of godly parents 
would have vanish'd away with heaviness 
for their poor children, whom they must 
have left in a desolate wilderness, destitute 
of the meanes of grace." After picturesquely 
setting forth their sense of the magnitude of 
such an enterprise as the foundation of a 
college in comparison with their feeble re- 
sources, he goes on to say : — 

"Hereupon all those who had tasted the 
sweet wine of Wisdom's drawing, and fed 
on the dainties of knowledg, began to set 
their wits a work. . . . Means they know 
there are, many thousands uneyed of mortal 
man, which every dales Providence brings 
forth; upon these resolutions, to work they 
go, and with thankful acknowledgement, 
readily take up all lawful means as they 



36 HISTORICAL WRITING 

come to hand, for place tliey fix their eye 
upon New Town, which to tell their Poster- 
ity whence they came, is now named Cam- 
bridg, and withal to make the whole world 
understand, that spiritual learning was the 
thing they chiefly desired, to sanctifie the 
other, and make the whole lump holy, and 
that learning being set uj^on its right object, 
might not contend for error instead of truth ; 
they chose this place, being then under the 
Orthodox, and soul-flourishing Ministry of 
Mr. Thomas Shepheard. . . . The scitua- 
tion of this colleg is very pleasant, at the end 
of a spacious plain, more like a bowling- 
green, then a wilderness, neer a fair navi- 
gable river, environed with many Neigh- 
boring Towns of note, . . . the building 
thought by some to be too gorgeous for a 
wilderness, and yet too mean in others appre- 
hensions for a colleg, it is at present inlar- 
ging by purchase of the neighbour houses, it 
hath the conveniences of a fair Hall, com- 
fortable Studies, and a good Library, given 
by the liberal hand of some Magistrates 
and Ministers with others. The chief gift 
towards the founding of this Colledg, was by 
Mr. John Harvard, a reverend Minister ; the 
country being very weak in their publike 



IN AMERICA. 37 

Treasury, expended about 500. £ toward it, 
and for the maintenance thereof, gave the 
yearly revenue of a Ferry passage between 
Boston and Charlestown, the which amounts 
to about 40. or 50. <£ per annum. . . . 
This CoUedg hath brought forth, and nurst 
up very hopeful plants, to the supplying 
some churches here, as the gracious and 
godly Mr. Wilson, son to the grave and 
zealous servant of Christ, Mr. John Wilson, 
[and others]. . . . Mr. Henry Dunster is 
now president of [itj, fitted from the Lord 
for the work, and by those that have skill 
that way reported to be an able Proficient, 
in both Hebrew, Greek, and Latine lan- 
guages, an Orthodox preacher of the truths 
of Christ, very powerful through his bless- 
ing to move the affection; and besides he 
having a good inspection into the well-or- 
dering of things for the Students' mainte- 
nance (whose commons hath been very short 
hitherto) by his frugal providence hath con- 
tinued them longer at their studies than 
otherwise they could have done ; and, verily, 
it's great pity such ripe heads as many of 
of them be, should want means to further 
them in learning." 

One curious feature of Johnson's style of 



38 HISTORICAL WRITING 

historical composition remains to be noted. 
This is his habit of inserting in his narrative 
bits of original verse. The earliest colonial 
writers were somewhat addicted to this habit. 
Roger Williams closes each short chapter of 
his Indian grammar, or " Key into the Lan- 
guage of America," with a stanza or so of 
verses as bad as any that one often encoun- 
ters ; John Smith, we have seen, developed 
in later life something of this habit. But 
few among them all had it in a more aggra- 
vated form than the author of the " Wonder- 
Working Providence." His book contains 
no less than sixty-eight poems. The present 
writer has read them all, with the pious care 
of a lineal descendant, and can confidently 
state that they are all very bad. One of 
them, on the Massachusetts Company, runs in 
this unconsciously brisk and jaunty manner : 

"For richest Jems and gainfull things most Merchants 

wisely venter; 
Deride not then New England men, this Corporation 

enter; 
Christ calls for Trade shall never fade, come Craddock 

factors send ; 
Let Mayhew go and other more, spare not thy coyne to 

spend ; 
Such Trades advance did never chance, in all thy Trading 

yet, 
Though some deride thy losse, abide, her 's gaine beyond 

man's wit." 



IN AMERICA. 39 

Most of them, however, are in honor or 
commemoration of individual persons pro- 
minently concerned in the foundation of the 
colony, or godly ministers of its churches. 
The author, after mentioning the person, 
inserts some modest introductory phrase, 
such as, " of whom the author is bold to say 
as followeth," or " in remembrance of whom 
mind this meeter," and theii, to use a phrase 
now become classic, "drops into poetry." 
One of the most characteristic is that which 
ensues after the mention of Governor John 
Endicott. "And now," he says, "let no 
man be offended at the author's rude verse, 
penned of purpose to keepe in memory the 
names of such worthies as Christ made 
strong for himselfe, in this unwonted worke 
of his." 

" Strong valiant John wilt thou march on, and take up 

station first, 
Christ cal'd hath thee, his soldier be, and faile not of thy 

trust ; 
Wilderness wants Christ's grace supplants, then plant 

his Churches pure, 
With Tongues gifted, and graces led, help thou to his 

procure ; 
Undaunted thou wilt not allow. Malignant men to wast : 
Christs Vineyard heere, whose grace should cheere, his 

well-beloved's tast. 
Then honoured be, thy Christ hath thee their Generall 

promoted : 



40 HISTORICAL WRITING 

To show their love, in place above, his people have thee 

voted. 
Yet must thou fall, to grave with all the Nobles of the 

Earth, 
Thou rotting worme, to dust must turn, and worse but 

for new birth." 

But in truth the service of Clio can hardly 
be profitably mixed with the meditation of 
other muses, and Johnson's book, in spite of 
his " meeters " and his excellent intentions, 
is not a historical source of the first quality. 
For while he gives much valuable informa- 
tion, especially as to the successive planting 
of new towns and churches in Massachusetts, 
he is not seldom inaccurate. 

Such were the four historians, and such 
was the historiography of our first colonial 
period. Of other writers, whose works were 
not of purely historical import, or who at- 
tained not unto the first four, it is not my 
purpose to speak. Yet one of these works, 
Hubbard's "Narrative of the Indian War," a 
book marked by much vividness of narration, 
was in its own time esteemed of such impor- 
tance that, for the perusing and approving 
it, we are told, " three honorable Magistrates 
were deputed by the Governor and Council 
of the Massachusetts Colony (one of whom 
was a Major-General, and the other two were 



IN AMERICA. 41 

afterwards Governors)." The whirligig of 
time brings its revenges. In our day, major- 
generals and governors, and even presidential 
candidates, have taken to the writing of his- 
tory, and the historical scholar has the op- 
portunity of reviewing them. 



42 HISTORICAL WRITING 



II. 

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

According to the arrangements of chro- 
nology, the seventeenth century ended' with 
the year 1700. According to the real facts 
of history, the period that we always think 
of as the seventeenth century ended at least 
a dozen years earlier, and the real eigh- 
teenth century then began. In other words, 
though there was no violent break, yet with 
the fall of the House of Stuart and the for- 
mation of the Grand Alliance a new page in 
the history of western Europe was turned. 
The age of Richelieu, of Strafford, of Crom- 
well, and of Milton had ended; the age of 
Walpole, of Dubois and Fleury, of Pope and 
Voltaire, had already begun. A century of 
prose, of criticism, of wit, and of finish set 
in. The very wars that have been alluded 
to are typical of the change. The conflicts 
in which the preceding generations had been 
engaged — the Thirty Years' War, the civil 
wars in England and in France — were con- 



TN AMERICA. 43 

flicts for great religious or constitutional 
principles. The war wliicli opened with the 
formation of the Grand Alliance and the 
expulsion of James II. was more like the 
wars of the succeeding period, — wars not 
wholly dynastic, indeed, but of a dryly 
political character, and waged rather with 
gallantry than with lofty enthusiasm. Poli- 
tics, at any rate in England, where alone 
politics was a popular concern, subsided into 
a condition unenthusiastic, inanimate, and 
humdrum. Material prosperity was rapidly 
increasing, and the world, tired of the age 
of conflict, became devoted to the pursuit of 
wealth. Society settled down into that pro- 
saic and secular temper, that engrossment 
with the material elements of life, that ab- 
sence of high ideals, to which of late we 
have been giving the name Philistinism. 
Political life consisted of little but selfish 
personal conflicts, between statesmen who 
laughed good-naturedly at the mention of 
patriotism or public virtue. The church 
was lifeless. The world was its own god, 
and Sir Kobert Walpole was its prophet. 

The independence of Europe which Amer- 
ica has enjoyed since the War of 1812, and 
has more distinctly felt since the close of 



44 HISTORICAL WRITING 

the Civil War, inclines us sometimes to 
speak and tliink of our earlier history as if 
an equal degree of independence prevailed 
in those times. The history of America is 
written as a separate story, as the story of 
something quite isolated. In reality, the 
same waves of thought and feeling generally 
agitated both, though they sometimes reached 
the American shores a little later. Fashions 
in these matters were as naturally followed 
in the colonies as fashions in dress or in 
social usages are followed in colonies every- 
where. So it happened that the age of 
Walpole was marked by much the same 
phenomena on this side of the water as in 
England. No period in our history was so 
dull. Political enthusiasm, whether it were 
enthusiasm for liberty or enthusiasm for loy- 
alty, declined, and gave place to an unheroic 
apathy. Religious zeal declined not less. 
Even controversial life in the church was 
concerned with matters less vital than here- 
tofore ; while as to controversies in matters 
of state, they centred almost universally 
about interests of a petty and personal and 
selfish sort, so that history finds little better 
to record than the quarrels of the royal gov- 
ernors with the colonial assemblies. The 



IN AMERICA. 45 

country was growing rich and prosperous, 
and as it sought wealth and prosperity more 
and more, the intensity which had marked 
the preceding period rapidly relaxed. The 
generation grew broader and more tolerant, 
indeed, but it at the same time grew more 
worldly and more commonplace in its aims 
and thoughts. 

The incoming of this age of prose had, I 
am persuaded, more unhappy results in New 
England than in Virginia, or in the Southern 
and Middle colonies generally. Its easier 
tone was better suited to the life and man- 
ners that had grown up in those milder and 
softer climates. The alteration from the sev- 
enteenth century was less marked and less 
demoralizing. But in Massachusetts the 
candid inquirer is forced to admit a deterio- 
ration for which the gain in liberality was 
hardly a compensation. Few things in our 
history are more pathetic than the grief of 
the uncompromising elders when the Mas- 
sachusetts charter was taken away and the 
Puritan theocracy fell. But the succeeding 
generation grew accustomed to the change, 
and submitted themselves willingly unto Cae- 
sar. The great experiment, the object of 
so much prayer and solicitude and ceaseless 



46 HISTORICAL WRITING 

effort, had failed. The strenuousness which 
had arisen from high aims and devotion to a 
great and religious task in part gave way, in 
part became diverted into pettier channels. 
The elder Puritans had shown harshness and 
austerity, but mixed with these were elements 
of grandeur. In the eighteenth century there 
is much of the same harshness and rigor, but 
the diary of Judge Sewall, the New England 
Pepys, shows us minds painfully exercised 
about small things, — about periwigs and sur- 
plices and the observance of Christmas. 

Sewall does not properly fall within the 
scope of these papers. In his solemn yet 
amusing way, he furnishes us with valuable 
historical material, indeed, but not with a 
professed historical composition. But much 
the same character is borne by the most 
prominent historian of the age, that redoubt- 
able New England Boanerges, the Reverend 
Doctor Cotton Mather, the "literary behe- 
moth " of our colonial era, as Professor Tyler 
has called him ; author of no less than four 
hundred and fifty-two published writings, 
and especially of the " Magnalia Christi 
Americana ; or. The Ecclesiastical History 
of New England, from Its First Planting in 
the Year 1620, unto the Year of our Lord, 



IN AMERICA. 47 

1698." This miracle of learning and piety 
and factious ambition and pedantry and con- 
ceit was born to every advantage which 
could attend a New England historian of 
the colonial period. He was the grandson 
of two of the chief lights of the pulpit in 
the days of the settlement, the Kev. John 
Cotton and the Rev. Richard Mather. His 
father, Dr. Increase Mather, was minister 
of a large parish in Boston, president of 
Harvard College, himself author of ninety- 
two writings, and for many years the most 
influential as well as the most learned man 
in New England. Great things were ex- 
pected of one who began life under such 
auspices, — non sine dis animosus infans. 
Cotton Mather early began to satisfy these 
expectations. He was graduated from Har- 
vard College at an age younger than that of 
any bachelors save two in its whole history, 
and three years later took the master's de- 
gree, sustaining in public disputation the 
thesis that the Hebrew points are of divine 
origin. His early piety was not less con- 
spicuous. " When he began to speak al- 
most," says his son and biographer, "he 
began to ^^r^^/^ ^'^^^ practiced this Duty con- 
stantly while he was a School-Boy ; and. 



48 HISTORICAL WRITING 

altho' he used no Forms in Secret, he com- 
posed some for his School-Fellows & obliged 
them to pray. Before he could write notes 
of Sermons in j^uhlic Assemblies, he com- 
monly wrote what he remembred when he 
came home. He read the Scriptures with 
so much Ardor and Assiduity, that ffteen 
Chapters a Day divided into three Exer- 
cises, and nothing less, would suffice him. 
He would moreover reprove his Play-mates 
for their wicked Words and Practices." At 
fourteen he began the practice of frequent 
fasting. 

Not many years after his graduation, this 
pink of youthful priggery was called to be 
assistant in his father's church, of which he 
remained a pastor for nearly half a century, 
for much of that time directing the affairs 
of the province, like a pope, from the pulpit 
of the Old North Church. His rich and 
fruitful activity in public affairs during that 
period cannot here be described, although 
important illustrations of his character may 
be derived from his course in the witchcraft 
troubles, in which he was extraordinarily 
active ; urging on the courts to more and 
more prosecutions, stimulating the popular 
excitement, and making the most violent 



IN AMERICA, 49 

efforts to prevent the natural reaction. It 
is with his literary activities and mental 
characteristics that we are concerned. His 
son, relating his death-bed conversation, says: 
"I asked him toliat Sentence or Word, ichat 
IlvKvov 'Ettos, He luould have me th'inh on 
constantly, for I ever desired to have him 
before me and hear him speaking to me? 
He said, ' Remember only that one word 
Fructuosus.^ " The advice was highly char- 
acteristic. Never was there a mortal of more 
prodigious industry. In one year he pre- 
pared and published fourteen books, preached 
more than seventy-two public sermons and 
nearly half as many private ones, kept sixty 
fasts and twenty-two vigils, besides attend- 
ing to his other varied duties, for he was 
most assiduous in pastoral labors. The 
amount of his work in the study was enor- 
mous ; that of his work among men was 
scarcely less so. The 361st of his works, as 
catalogued by Mr. Sibley, is entitled " Ho- 
nesta Parsimonia ; or. Time Spent as it should 
be. Proposals, ... To prevent that Great 
Folly and Mischief, The Loss of Time." 
Herein, at least, the learned and painful 
doctor practiced what he preached. The 
record of the various ingenious means which 



50 HISTORICAL WRITING 

he employed in order not to waste any time 
is an amusing and interesting one. Even 
his prayers and meditations and thoughts 
were carefully systematized. The topic and 
method of his meditations while dressing 
were prescribed for each morning in the 
week. There was method observed even in 
the occasional thoughts with which he strove 
to have odd moments profitably occupied. 

" When the Doctor waked in the Nighty'' 
says his son, " he would impose it as a Law 
upon Himself ever before he fell asleep 
again to bring some Glory of Ms Saviour 
into his Meditations, and have some agree- 
able Desire of his Soul upon it. . . . When 
he loashed his Hands, he must think of the 
clean Hands, as well as pure Heart, which 
belong to the Citizens of Zion. And when 
he did so mean an Action as paring his 
Nails, he tho't how he might lay aside all 
Superfluity of Naughtiness. . . . He was 
very constant in Ejaculatory Prayers and 
Praises, . . . While he walked the Streets, 
or sat in a Room with his Mind otherwise 
unemployed, he would not lose the Time, but 
use his Wit as well as Grace in contriving 
some suitable Blessing for such and such as 
were before him : and then he would form 



IN AMERICA. 51 

it into an Ejaculation for them. . . . When 
he walked the Streets^ he still blessed many 
Persons who never knew it, with secret 
Wishes after this manner for them ; Upon 
the sight of a tall man, ''Lord., Give that 
Man high attainments in Ch7nstianity .^ 
A lame Man, ' Lord., Help that Man on 
moral Accounts to walk uprightly,'' A 
Negro, ' Lord., Wash that poor Soul ; make 
him white hy the Washing of thy Spirit J' 
A Man going by without observing him, 
' Lord., L pray Thee., Help that Man to 
take a due Notice of Christ.'' " The pun- 
ning habit which is here noticeable crops 
out in all his writings, and indeed a gen- 
eral habit of verbal jingles and ingenuities 
which might justify one in applying to 
himself what he in the " Magnalia " says in 
praise of Rev. John Wilson, and commend- 
ing 

" Plis care to guide his flock and feed his lambs, 
By words, works, prayers, }>salms, alms and anagrams." 

Enough has been cited to show thoroughly 
the character of this extraordinary man, — 
a man of extraordinary piety, no doubt, but 
also of extraordinary self-consciousness, ris- 
ing at times into the most amusing vanity. 
His tireless energy and industry in study 



52 HISTORICAL WRITING 

went far towards fittiiiof him to be a histo- 
rian of New England. His family connec- 
tions and his prominent position gave him 
additional facilities for such a task. Already, 
among his multitudinous publications, he 
had issued a few minor ones of historical 
content, such as " The Bostonian Ebenezer," 
" Decennium Luctuosum," " Arma Virosque 
Cano," and " A Pillar of Gratitude." But 
about 1693 he formed the design of writing 
a general church history of New England, a 
design which the neighboring ministers much 
encouraged. It was finished in 1697. On 
January 12, 1698, he records in his diary : 
" I set apart this day for the exercise of a 
secret fast before the Lord. One special 
design of my supplications was to obtain 
the direction of Heaven about my ' Church 
History,' the time and way of my sending it 
into Europe, and the methods of its publica- 
tion. I think I am assured that my suppli- 
cations are heard in this matter." After long 
delays, an opportunity occurred to send it to 
London ; but still further delays intervened. 
The book was large, the publishers were 
cold ; but at length one was found who, not 
with any expectation of gain, but for the 
glory of God, undertook its publication. It 



IN AMERICA. 53 

may be interesting to note tlie mode in which 
the historian manifested his concern for his 
precious work, — a mode perhaps not often 
observed by the historians of our day. In 
his diary, under date of April 4, 1702, oc- 
curs the following entry : — 

" I was in much distress upon my spirit 
concerning my ' Church History,' and some 
other elaborate composures, that I have sent 
into London ; about the progress towards 
the publication whereof the Lord still keeps 
me in the dark. To have those composures, 
with all my labors and all my prayers about 
them, lost, would be a terrible trial to me. 
But I thought it my duty to prepare for such 
a trial. Wherefore I set apart a vigil this 
night peculiarly for that service. Accord- 
ingly, in the dead of the night, I first sang 
some agreeable psalms ; and then, casting 
myself prostrate in the dust, on my study- 
floor, before the Lord, I confessed unto him 
the sins for which he might justly reject me 
and all my services ; and I promised unto 
him, that if He would reject those particular 
services, which I have been laboring to do 
for His name, in my ' Church History,' and 
some of the composures now in England, 
though my calamity therein would be very 



54 HISTORICAL WRITING 

sensible, yet I would with His help submit 
patiently unto His holy will therein ; and I 
would not be discouraged thereby at all from 
further endeavors to serve my Lord Jesus 
Christ, but I would love him still, and seek 
him still, and serve him still, and never be 
weary of doing so, but essay to serve him in 
other ways, if he would not accept of these. 
Thus did I resign unto the Lord ; who there- 
upon answered me, that He was my Father, 
and that He took delight in me, and that 
He would smile upon my endeavors to serve 
Him, and that my ' Church History ' should 
be accepted and prospered." 

Mather's solicitude for his books, it ought 
to be said, should not be regarded as arising 
solely from vanity. The desire to do good 
by them seems to have been ever present 
with him. From both motives, he used the 
utmost care and ingenuity and diligence in 
disseminating copies of them in all directions, 
more especially throughout New England, as 
soon as he received them from the press oi 
Boston or of London. The arrival of the 
first copy of the " Magnalia " is thus chroni- 
cled by him, October 30, 1702 : — 

" Yesterday I first saw my ' Church His- 
tory ' since the publication of it. A gentle- 



IN AMERICA. 55 

man arrived here from Newcastle in Eng- 
land, that had bought it there. Wherefore 
I set apart this day for solemn thanksgiving 
unto God for his watchful and gracious 
providence over that work, and for the har- 
vest of so many prayers and cares and tears 
and resignations as I had employed upon it. 
My religious friend, Mr. Bromfield, who 
had been singularly helpful to the publica- 
tion of that great book (of twenty shillings 
price at London), came to me at the close 
of the day, to join with me in some of my 
praises to God." 

The offspring of all these " prayers and 
cares and tears and resignations " is indeed a 
large book, distended by abundant divagations 
and moralizings and quotations, and even 
the insertion, in extended reprint, of essays 
already published. There is little consis- 
tency or method in the mode of presenta- 
tion. It is the outpouring of a full mind 
working at great speed. The general scheme 
is plain enough, but it is such as to involve 
much repetition and looseness of arrange- 
ment. The first of the seven books of which 
the " Magnalia " consists gives a somewhat 
desultory history, not only ecclesiastical but 
civil, of the colonies of New England. As an 



56 HISTORICAL WRITING 

appendix to this book is reprinted " The 
Bostonian Ebenezer." The second book is 
entitled " Ecclesiaruni Clypei," and contains 
the lives of the governors that were as shields 
unto the churches of New England. To 
each of the more important ones is conse- 
crated a separate chapter, under some such 
quaint title as " Nehemias Americanus, the 
Life of John Winthrop, Esq., Governour of 
the Massachuset Colony." The third book 
gives, in forty-three chapters, the lives of 
the principal New England divines. The 
first part, entitled " Johannes in Eremo " 
(John in the wilderness), commemorates four 
of the most prominent, grouped together, 
for no other reason, apparently, than that 
they all bore the name John, — John Cot- 
ton, John Norton, John Wilson, and John 
Davenport. In the second part (quaintly 
entitled " Sepher Jereim, i. e. Liber Deum 
Timentium ; or. Dead Abels yet speaking 
and spoken of"), in the third part, and in 
the fourth, other clerical worthies are com- 
memorated who were of less consequence, or 
who did not have the name of John. The 
fourth book is devoted to the history of 
Harvard College, and the biographies of its 
more eminent graduates ; the fifth, to the 



IN AMERICA. 57 

acts and monuments of the New England 
church. The sixth book, perhaps the most 
curious of all, is called '' Thaumaturgus, . . . 
i. e. Liber Memorabilium, . . . wherein 
very many illustrious discoveries and demon- 
strations of Divine Providence in remark- 
able Mercies and Judgments on many par- 
ticular persons among the people of New 
England, are observed, collected and re- 
lated." One chapter, headed *' Christus 
super Aquas," is given to remarkable de- 
liverances by sea ; another, " Ceraunius or 
Brontologia Sacra," to providences con- 
nected with thunder and lightning. Still 
another has as an appendix a history of crim- 
inals executed for capital crimes, with their 
dying speeches. But the most remarkable 
of all is that bearing the formidable title 
" Thaumatographia Pneumatica," and " re- 
lating the wonders of the invisible world in 
preternatural occurrences." " There has 
been," he says, " too much cause to observe, 
that the christians who were driven into the 
American Desart^ which is now call'd New 
England, have to their sorrow seen Azazel 
[Satan] dwelling and raging there in very 
tragical instances. The devils have doubt- 
less felt a more than ordinary vexation, from 



58 HISTORICAL WRITING 

the arrival of those christians with their 
sacred exercises of Christianity in this wil- 
derness : But the sovereignty of heaven has 
permitted them still to remain in the wilder- 
ness, for our vexation, as well as their own." 
And so he proceeds to a detailed narration 
of fourteen selected cases of witchcraft, 
forming a chapter of most curious reading, 
and a monument of his own ingenuity and 
credulity. Finally, the " Magnalia " closes 
with a book called " Ecclesiarum Proelia, 
or, A Book of the Wars of the Lord." It 
is, however, mainly concerned with the con- 
flicts of the colonial authorities against her- 
etics ; but at the end it includes a reprint 
of the two small books, " Arma Virosque 
Cano " and " Decennium Luctuosum," giv- 
ing an account of the Indian wars. 

Such was the composition of this famous 
work. Its style was not less peculiar. 
Prince, indeed, in his funeral sermon upon 
Mather, confesses that " in his Style indeed 
He was something singular, and not so 
agreable to the Gust of the Age." He was 
probably the most learned man, and cer- 
tainly had the largest library, in colonial 
America. The treasures of these intellectual 
resources were lavished upon his work, until 



IN AMERICA. 59 

its tissue was heavy and stiff with the jewels 
of pedantic quotation. It is a very easy 
matter to appear erudite, and doubtless 
Mather knew the imj^osing trick of jauntily 
alluding to recondite authors, and ignor- 
ing their unfamiliarity to writer as well as 
reader. But with all deductions, he was 
really very learned. The jewels were gen- 
uine enough ; the fault was that the fabric 
was overloaded with them. Some indeed 
have breathed a suspicion that they were 
out of all proportion to the value of the 
ground-stuff. An eminent but crotchety 
historical scholar of the last generation used 
systematically to refuse to believe any un- 
supported statement of Mather. This, how- 
ever, is unjust. He is often inaccurate, but 
he has conveyed to us a great amount of 
information not elsewhere attainable. The 
criticisms upon his historical style may best 
be explained by showing a bit of it. With 
some difficulty, I select a passage not cum- 
bered with Greek and Latin quotations. 
It is the beginning of the chapter called 
" Venisti tandem ? or discoveries of Amer- 
ica:"— 

"It is the opinion of some, though 'tis 
hut an opinion^ and hut of some learned 



60 HISTORICAL WRITING 

men, that when the saerecl oracles of heaven 
assure us, the things under the earth are 
some of those, whose knees are to how in the 
name of Jesus, by those things are meant 
the inhabitants of America, who are Anti- 
podes to those of the other hemisphere. I 
would not quote any words of Lactantius, 
though there are some to countenance this 
interpretation, because of their being so un- 
geographical. ... I can contentedly allow 
that Ameinca (which as the learned Nicolas 
Fuller observes, might more justly be called 
Columhina) was altogether unknown to the 
penmen of the Ploly Scriptures, and in the 
ages when the scriptures were penned. I 
can allow, that those parts of the earth, 
which do not include America, are in the 
inspired writings of Luke, and of Paul, 
stiled, all the world. I can allow, that the 
opinion of Torniellus, and of Pagius, about 
the apostles preaching the gospel in Amer- 
ica, has been sufficiently refuted by Basna- 
gius. But I am out of the reach of Pope 
Zachary' s excommunication. I can assert 
the existence of the American Antipodes ; 
and I can report unto the European 
churches great occurrences among these 
Americans. ^^ 



IN AMERICA. 61 

Even if the Americans were antipodes of 
Europeans in a geographical sense, which 
is hardly literally true, they were far from 
being so in respect to mental develo23ment. 
One of the most interesting facts about 
Mather as a literary phenomenon is that he 
is our chief American example of a remark- 
able historical school then dominant in every 
part of Europe, and shows America partici- 
pating in the life and evolution of European 
thought. The sixteenth century and the 
early seventeenth had been an age of great 
historians who were also great men. Promi- 
nent statesmen and soldiers wrote brilliant 
accounts of events in which they had borne 
an active part. Something of this charac- 
teristic belongs, as we have seen in the pre- 
vious chapter, to the American historical 
writers of that time. The period from 1650 
to 1750, on the other hand, was in Europe 
distinctively an age of erudition. Excel- 
lence in historical narrative declined, but 
enormous labors of investigation, criticism, 
and publication were carried through. It 
was the age of Bollandists and Benedictines, 
of Mabillon and Muratori and Rymer. In 
every country giants of erudition arose, and 
vast additions were made to the sum of his- 

6 



62 HISTORICAL WRITING 

torical knowledge. Obviously, Cotton Ma- 
ther was nowise the equal of these Anakim. 
But he is their American analogue, and he, 
and Thomas Prince, and the Kev. William 
Stith, of Virginia, show us that already the 
Enolish colonies so far shared the life of 

o 

the world that even the movements of Euro- 
pean scholarship found their counterpart on 
these shores. 

But there was, at any rate, one American 
historian who was not thus mentally annexed 
to Europe, but retained an original spirit, 
racy of the Virginian soil. It has already 
been remarked that the incoming of the age 
of Walpole had less undesirable effects in 
Virginia than in New England. Something 
must be attributed to the happier influence 
of the climate ; something, to origin from 
Englishmen whose traditions were not Puri- 
tan. But whatever were the causes, the tone 
of Virginia life and thought in the earlier 
part of the eighteenth century was an ex- 
ceedingly attractive one. The tone of Vir- 
ginia life, I ought perhaps rather to say ; for 
of its thought we really know little. But 
its life, at any rate, was marked by an open- 
ness, a freshness, a geniality, strikingly con- 
trasting with the narrow strenuousness which 



IN AMERICA. 63 

the decline of Puritan fervor had left behind 
it in contemporary Massachusetts. The 
Virginian planters were not less worldly 
and unheroic, not less the children of the 
eighteenth century. But their engrossment 
with the world took the turn of a hearty 
delight in it, so fresh and spontaneous and 
agreeable as half redeemed its Philistinism. 
Of this life, easy-going and commonplace 
and sterile of intellectual achievement, yet 
pleasing and natural, we fortunately have 
an admirable exponent in Robert Beverley. 
Perhaps it is rather as such an exponent than 
as a historian that Beverley is valuable to us ; 
for, excellent as his historical narration is, it 
occupies but little more than a third of the 
not very large book which, in 1705, he pub- 
lished under the title " The History of Vir- 
ginia." The rest is descriptive of the natural 
productions of the country, of the Indians 
and their civilization, and of the present 
state of the colony and the nature of its 
government. It is this last portion, appar- 
ently, out of which the volume grew. In 
his youth, Beverley's father was clerk of the 
House of Burgesses ; he thus became famil- 
iar with the public records and public busi- 
ness of the colony, and for his own infor- 



64 HISTORICAL WRITING 

mation gathered many notes regarding its 
administration. These notes lay unused until 
the year 1703, when, after the fashion of the 
wealthy planters of that day, he went to 
London upon business. Soon after his arri- 
val, his bookseller told him that a general 
account of all Her Majesty's plantations in 
America was being prepared for printing, 
and requested him to look over that part of 
it relating to Virginia and Carolina. The 
book was Oldmixon's " British Empire in 
America." Half a dozen sheets of the 
manuscript of it were brought to Mr. Bever- 
ley. What followed may as well be related 
in the colonial proprietor's own words as in 
any paraphrase of them : — 

" I very innocently (when I began to read) 
placed Pen and Paper by me, and made my 
Observations upon the first Page, but found 
it in the Sequel so very faulty, and an 
Abridgment only of some Accounts that had 
been printed 60 or 70 years ago ; in which 
also he had chosen the most strange and un- 
true Parts, and left out the more sincere 
and faithful, so that I laid aside all Thoughts 
of farther Observations, and gave it only a 
Reading; and my Bookseller for Answer, 
that the Account was too faulty and too im- 



IN AMERICA. 65 

perfect to be mended : Withal telling liim, 
that seeing I had in my junior Days taken 
some Notes of the Government, which I then 
had with me in England, I would make him 
an Account of my own Country, if I could 
find Time, while I staid in London. And 
this I should rather undertake in Justice 
to so fine a Country ; because it has been 
so misrepresented to the common People of 
England, as to make them believe, that the 
Servants in Virginia are made to draw in 
Cart and Plow, as Horses and Oxen do in 
England, and that the Country turns all 
People black, who go to live there, with 
other such prodigious Phantasms. Accord- 
ingly before I left London, I gave him a 
short History of the Country, from the first 
Settlement, with an Account of its then 
State ; but I would not let him mingle it 
with Oldmixon's other Account of the Plan- 
tations, because I took them to be all of a 
Piece with those I had seen of Virginia and 
Carolina, but desired mine to be printed by 
itself." 

It is no wonder that Beverley took this 
course, in view of some of the errors he 
signalizes in that book. For instance, in 
one passage Oldmixon said, " When Indians 



QQ HISTORICAL WRITING 

at the Head of the Bay [i. e. Chesapeake 
Bay] travelled to New York, they past, go- 
ing and coming, by the frontiers of Virginia 
and traded with the Virginians," etc. Here 
we have, early exemplified, that originality of 
view respecting American geography on the 
part of Englishmen which was until recent 
times the source of so much vexation to 
American bosoms, and which, now that we 
have become less sensitive, proves so peren- 
nially amusing. 

The paragraph which I have quoted to 
show the genesis of Beverley's book will also 
serve to exhibit the merits of his style. It 
is simple, clear, and direct, far removed from 
the curious involution and cumbersome pe- 
dantry of Cotton Mather's ; it never smacks 
of the lamp. The author was a plain Vir- 
ginia gentleman, who had read some books, 
not too many, perhaps, but did not think it 
necessary to mention them all, nor to quote 
them with a frequency inversely propor- 
tioned to the familiarity of the language in 
which they were written. A French trav- 
eler of the period has left us an interesting 
picture of the home and the simple rural life 
of Beverley, whom he happened to visit upon 
business. It is too long to be here quoted ; 



/N AMERICA. 67 

but the characteristics which it brings to 
liglit are most attractive and Arcadian. 
Again and again in Beverley's book his 
strong love of nature crops out, and some 
of his descriptions are truly delightful. 
This, however, is in the second, third, and 
fourth parts of the book. As to the first or 
historical portion, it is too brief to convey to 
us a very great body of information on Vir- 
ginian history ; but the sprightliness and 
ease of the style prevent its ever seeming 
dry. For the latter years of the seventeenth 
century, the years just before it was writ- 
ten, its volume becomes greater, and it gives 
some interesting information on details of 
public affairs, such as might easily come to 
the writer not only from his own experience, 
but from his family connections, for he was 
brother-in-law at once to President John 
Robinson and to Colonel Byrd of Westover. 
Leaving aside such plain and business-like 
accounts as that of Beverley, the histories 
hitherto written in America had mostly been 
written either for the glory of God, or for 
the glory of the writer, as in the case of 
Captain John Smith, or for the glory of 
both in curious mixture, as in the case of 
Cotton Mather. It remained for some one 



68 HISTORICAL WRITING 

to prepare the soil for the growth of Ameri- 
can historical scholarship by beginning to 
write history without didactic or personal 
tendency, and in a truly scientific spirit. It 
may fairly be said that the wealth and lei- 
sure of the torpid and money-getting age 
which has been described were necessary 
prerequisites. The traditional view is that 
scholarship and poverty are twin sisters. In 
reality, however it may be of scholarship 
generally, the thorough pursuit of history 
requires so much laborious research, and 
therefore so much leisure on the part of 
some one, that for its successful conduct it 
has generally been necessary that, if not the 
individual, at any rate the age, should be 
rich. At all events, with the increase of 
wealth a hundred and fifty years ago, there 
did appear our first historical scholars, one 
in Virginia, one in Massachusetts. There 
was a curious parallelism, not only in their 
purposes and methods, but also in the unfor- 
tunate immediate fate of their books. 

The two scholars alluded to are the Kev. 
Thomas Prince, minister of the Old South 
Church in Boston, and the Rev. William 
Stith, president of William and Mary Col- 
lege in Virginia. The elder of the two was 



IN AMERICA. 69 

the Boston clergyman, a man of high and 
amiable character, who from his boyhood 
had possessed an eager interest in whatever 
bore upon the history of New England. 
Appreciating more highly than those who 
had preceded him the need of scholarly 
thoroughness and the value of original au- 
thorities, he spent years in making a search, 
as exhaustive as he could, for printed and 
manuscript materials. Thus he formed that 
invaluable New England Library which has 
been already more than once referred to, and 
of which a considerable portion, surviving 
to our times, forms the priceless Prince Col- 
lection in the Boston Public Library. Of 
books, pamphlets, and printed papers he had 
accumulated, he tells us, about a thousand ; 
he had also gathered together a multitude of 
manuscripts left by the early settlers, doc- 
uments, copies, and letters, to the number of 
several hundred. 

With these copious materials. Prince at 
length, though with diffidence, began the 
composition of a Chronological History of 
New England. His modest aim did not ex- 
tend to the preparation of a historical com- 
position in the fullest sense ; he proposed 
merely to write a chronology, but with every 



70 HISTORICAL WRITING 

sort of care to secure the most minute ac- 
curacy. He proposed to include " remark- 
able providences," the deaths of prominent 
men, brief notices of transactions of the gov- 
ernment, elections, grants and settlement of 
towns, the formation of churches, the ordi- 
nation and removal of ministers, the erec- 
tion of important buildings, remarkable laws, 
executions, wars, battles, — in short, all the 
events of the earlier history of those colo- 
nies in which his contemporaries might feel 
an interest. In the long introductory por- 
tion he notes down, in true annalistic fash- 
ion, the principal events in the history of the 
world from its creation down to the settle- 
ment of New England. This, he confesses, 
gave him a vast amount of trouble ; and 
we must regret that he spent so much time 
in perfecting it, for the result was that the 
New England Chronology never got beyond 
the year 1633. Indeed, the first volume, 
published in 1736, carried the narrative no 
farther than to the autumn of 1630. Here 
the publication rested until eighteen or nine- 
teen years later, when the author, then an 
old man, began the publishing of volume 
second by the issue of sixpenny numbers, 
of thirty-two pages each. Only three such 



IN AMERICA. 71 

numbers, it is supposed, were ever issued ; 
aud of these three no one now possesses a 
perfect set. The truth seems to be, that 
there was not at that tinie an adequate pub- 
lic demand for a history so minute as Prince 
provided. 

It will be evident from the plan of his 
work that it does not lend itself readily to 
interesting quotation. But it is the first of 
our histories, not itself an original source, 
which is of value as a contribution to histor- 
ical science rather than to historical litera- 
ture ; and it is to this that it owes its great 
importance. Prince and his Virginian con- 
temporary are the progenitors of modern 
American historiography. The wide sweep 
of the search after materials, the patience 
and industry in investigation, the minute 
accuracy and fidelity which characterize the 
best of the moderns, are all to be found 
in Prince, and to be found in a high degree. 
" It is Exactness I aim at," he says, " and 
would not have the least mistake, if possible, 
pass to the world. If I have unhappily fallen 
into any, it is through inadvertency only." 
The sj^irit of the work, it will be seen, was 
that of the Benedictines of St. Maur ; and 
the execution seems to have been as scholarly 
as the intention. 



72 HISTORICAL WRITING 

Among the points of resemblance between 
Prince and Stith, their ill-success in publica- 
tion is one of the most remarkable, and in 
truth not at all creditable to our forefathers. 
There is something highly amusing in the 
tone of annoyance with which Stith remarks 
the indifference of his contemporaries to his 
labors. After speaking of his intention to 
have included many more interesting docu- 
ments, he says : " But I perceive, to my no 
small Surprise and Mortification, that some 
of my Countrymen (and those too. Persons 
of high Fortune and Distinction) seemed to 
be much alarmed, and to grudge, that a com- 
plete History of their own Country would 
run to more than one Volume, and cost 
them above half a Pistole. I was, there- 
fore, obliged to restrain my Hand, . . . for 
fear of enhancing the Price, to the immense 
Charge and irreparable Damage of such 
generous and publick-spirited Gentlemen.*" 
This, we may suppose, was the reason why 
the work was never carried beyond the year 
1624. If it had been carried down, on the 
same scale, to the year of publication, 1747, 
it would have made an eight-volume history 
of the colony of Virginia, a work of such 
bulk that even " Persons of High Fortune 



IN AMERICA. 73 

and Distinction " in Virginia might be ex- 
cused for hesitating to support it. 

Yet these persons might have done well to 
sustain him, for his " History of the First 
Discovery and Settlement of Virginia " is 
an excellent piece of work, — pleasing in 
style, accurate, and fair. That it is too pro- 
lix, however, is a thing that cannot be de- 
nied; and this is the more to be blamed 
because the proportions between the different 
parts show us clearly that the author was 
dominated by his materials, rather than mas- 
ter of them, and that he relates much of his 
story at great length simply because it is 
in his power to do so. Thus, out of the 
seventeen years which he treats, he devotes 
three fourths of his space to the first three 
years and the last five, evidently because 
materials were most abundant for these. 
For the years 1607-1609 he could draw on 
the most detailed portion of Captain John 
Smith's narrative, — a source the complete 
trustworthiness of which he seems in general 
not at all to doubt, though disposed to make 
considerable allowances for personal pique 
and party spirit in regard to Smith's ex- 
pressions concerning the Virginia Company. 
" Not," he says, " that I question Captain 

7 



74 HISTORICAL WRITING 

Smith's Integrity ; for I take him to have 
been a very honest Man, and a strenuous 
Lover of Truth," 

When this esteemed guide leaves him, the 
ex-president of William and Mary falls back 
upon the papers in the Capitol at Williams- 
burg, and the collection of documents made, 
for historical purposes, by his late uncle. Sir 
John Randolph. With the year 1619, how- 
ever, his narrative widens into a very copious 
account, which is derived, in a far greater 
degree than has been generally supposed 
hitherto, from one of the sources which he 
mentions. The mode in which he refers to 
it is as follows : " But I must confess myself 
most indebted, in this Part of my History, to 
a very full and fair Manuscript of the Lon- 
don Company's Records, which was commu- 
nicated to me by the late worthy Presi- 
dent of our Council, the Honorable William 
Byrd, Esq." The records so described have 
a curious history, and one which, it may be 
remarked parenthetically, authors have al- 
most invariably related incorrectly. In 1624 
King James I. seized the papers of the com- 
pany and dissolved it. Shortly before this, 
in anticipation of such a seizure, certain 
officers of the company had secretly caused 



IN AMERICA. 75 

to be pre]3ared an attested copy of the re- 
cords of its proceeding's during the last 
five years, to serve as evidence for their 
justification in case of prosecution. The 
co})y, when completed, was entrusted to the 
president of the company, Shakespeare's 
friend, the Earl of Southampton. On the 
death of his son, the Lord High Treasurer 
Southampton, in 1667, the two volumes of 
the copy were bought of his executors, for 
sixty guineas, by Captain William Byrd, 
of Virginia, and for more than a century 
formed a part of the extensive library of the 
Byrd family at Westover. These are the 
two volumes of which Stith made use, and 
he appears to have used them very freely. 
All subsequent historians have referred to 
them, but to all appearances they have not 
really used them. It would take too long to 
relate how most of them passed into the pos- 
session of Thomas Jefferson, and then into 
that of Congress. In the Library of Con- 
gress these primary sources for the history 
of our first colony have now been buried for 
sixty years, and all efforts to make them 
public have hitherto failed before the apathy 
of Congress and the difficulties presented by 
its cumbrous machinery. Extracts from a 
copy have lately been printed. 



76 HISTORICAL WRITING 

The fifth work to be mentioned, the best 
of all, was written by a man of conspic- 
uous station, — lieutenant - governor, chief 
justice, and finally governor of Massachu- 
setts, — and was bodily associated with a 
striking event in our Revolutionary history. 
TJie book referred to is the history of the 
colony and province of Massachusetts by 
Thomas Hutchinson, the famous Tory gov- 
ernor. The scene alluded to was in the time 
of the Stamp Act troubles, when already the 
first volume of the history had appeared. A 
Boston mob, of the sort which in our school- 
days we are taught to venerate as gatherings 
of liberty-loving patriots engaged in resist- 
ing oppression, attacked the lieutenant-gov- 
ernor's house. The fact was that he had 
disapproved of the Stamp Act policy, and 
had opposed it by every legal means. Bat 
liberty-loving patriots engaged in resistance 
to oppression cannot be expected to give 
attention to defenses so subtle. They broke 
in the doors and windows, demolished all 
the furniture in the house, and destroyed or 
scattered all the books and papers of the 
occupant. A clerical neighbor made efforts 
to save these last, and nearly all of the 
invaluable manuscript of the second vol- 



IN AMERICA- 77 

ume of the history was thus preserved. Al- 
though it had lain in the street, scattered 
abroad several hours in the rain, yet so much 
of it was legible that the author was able 
to supply the rest, and to transcribe it. In 
spite of the loss of materials, the second 
volume was published nine years later. " I 
pray God," says the writer in his preface, 
after speaking of the riot, " to forgive the 
actors in and advisers of this most savage 
and inhuman injury, and I hope their pos- 
terity will read with pleasure and profit what 
has so narrowly escaped the outrage of their 
ancestors." It is well known that in this 
same j^ear the governor retired to England, 
from which he never returned. Long after- 
wards, and years after he had died in exile, 
his grandson, at the request of the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society, published the 
third volume of the history. The recent 
publication of his " Diary and Letters "has 
made clear, to a generation more disposed to 
be just to those who were faithful to their 
king, that Governor Hutchinson was, both 
in patriotism and in character, fully the 
equal of his opponents. Of his qualities as 
a historian there is but one opinion. He 
was industrious in research, and liad access 



78 HISTORICAL WRITING 

to many materials, especially those collected 
by Cotton Mather, for Mather's son was his 
brother-in-law. He wrote with excellent 
judgment, and in a good though not bril- 
liant style. " His mind," says the late Dr. 
Deane, " was eminently a judicial one ; and 
candor, moderation, and a desire for truth 
appear to have guided his pen." Even the 
third volume, which treats of the period from 
1749 to 1774, the period in which he was 
himself so large a figure in the bitter polit- 
ical contests which led to the Revolution, is 
written with much fairness. The spirit with 
which Hutchinson approached the history 
of the colony and province is shown by a 
note found among his papers, and written 
near the end of his life, in which he says : — 
" In the course of my education, I found 
no part of science a more pleasing study 
than history, and no part of the history of 
any country more useful than that of its 
government and laws. The history of Great 
Britain and its dominions was of all others 
the most delightful to me, and a thorough 
knowledge of the nature and constitution of 
the supreme and of the subordinate govern- 
ments thereof I considered as what would be 
peculiarly beneficial to me in the line of life 



IN AMERICA. 79 

upon whicli I was entering ; and the public 
employments to which I was early called, 
and sustained for near thirty years together, 
gave me many advantages for the acquisition 
of this knowledge." 

Here again, as in the case of Cotton Ma- 
ther and Prince, we may suggest a parallel 
with the European movements. Hutchin- 
son's approach to historical study was mainly 
from the point of view of the student of 
institutional history. In Europe, by the 
middle of the eighteenth century, the age of 
erudition had been succeeded by an age 
mainly devoted to the study of the develop- 
ment of institutions. The Puritan Hutchin- 
son was in his way a member of the school 
of Montesquieu, Turgot, and Voltaire, — a 
disciple, consciously or unconsciously, of tlie 
" Essai sur les Moeurs." 



80 HISTORICAL WRITING 



III. 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR. 

It is difficult to make any general state- 
ment concerning the relation which great 
national crises bear to the development of 
literature as a whole, or of historical litera- 
ture in particular. Sometimes, after a nation 
has passed through a period of struggle, the 
same mental energy which has carried it 
through the conflict bursts forth into great 
literary activity. Sometimes such a period 
is followed by a time of silence, as if the 
national forces had been exhausted in mili- 
tary and political effort. In the case of 
wars for freedom and independence, how- 
ever, it is generally the former which hap- 
pens ; for, however great the losses of war, 
the gain of liberty and of opportunity for 
free expansion is felt to be far more than 
a compensation, and the sense of freedom 
gives a freshness and spontaneity that urge 
toward literary expression. Thus the French 
Revolution, unfettering all the forces of tjie 



IN AMERICA. 81 

national life, bronglit on a period of activity 
in historical production more remarkable 
than any since the sixteenth century, and 
one noteworthy in general literary activity. 
The same is in a very high degree true of 
the heroic and successful struggle of the 
Netherlanders for freedom. No period in 
the history of Dutch literature is more bril- 
liant than that which followed the virtual 
securing of freedom by the Twelve Years' 
Truce, — a period made brilliant not only by 
the work of the best poets of the nation, but 
also by that of some of its best scholars and 
historians. 

In the United States, no movement so 
noteworthy resulted from the successful ac- 
complishment of the War for Independence. 
Not much literature of considerable value, 
historical or other, appeared during or im- 
mediately after the Revolution. One reason, 
no doubt, was that crudity of life and thought 
which is inevitable to the colonial state ; the 
country was too young and too immature to 
make it reasonable to expect a great litera- 
ture. And yet it is to be remembered that, 
in the period just preceding, so very credit- 
able a piece of work as Hutchinson's " His- 
tory of Massachusetts Bay " had appeared. 



82 HISTORICAL WRITING 

giving promise of good things in literature 
and history. Nor is it an adequate explana- 
tion to adduce the undoubtedly great losses 
which Tory emigration had brought to the 
classes most likely to be interested in liter- 
ary development and to further it. 

The truth seems to be that, by great and 
perhaps premature efforts to secure inde- 
pendence, the States had become exhausted 
to such a degree that the eventual acquisi- 
tion of freedom, though hailed with loud 
rejoicings, could not have, upon a people 
wearied, discordant, and drained of their 
resources, the vivifying effect which such 
achievements are wont to have. If one keeps 
in mind only the year 1776, he will think of 
the Revolutionary era as a period of national 
glory ; but if he takes into consideration the 
year 1786, and such incidents as Shays's 
Rebellion, he will see that at its close the 
condition of the thirteen bodies politic was 
far from sound, even though independence 
had at length been secured. Even the union 
of 1789 did not at once bring on a healthier 
state. It was entered into with reluctance, 
and it was followed by discord. Alexander 
Hamilton, the young Federalist Rehoboam, 
laid upon the necks of an unwilling people 



IN AMERICA. 83 

the yoke of a national consolidation which 
their fathers had never borne. Availing 
himself of the general uneasiness, like the 
wily Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, his astute 
opponent, Jefferson, summoning discontented 
Israel to its tents, erected at ancient Beer- 
sheba and newly settled Dan the golden 
calves of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolu- 
tions, and through their worship prolonged 
the congenial Separatism which had de- 
scended to this generation from its predeces- 
sors. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic 
wars in Europe delayed still longer the ad- 
vent of internal tranquillity. 

Nevertheless, the years that intervened 
between the first and the second war with 
Great Britain were not wholly barren. 
Something of literature began to grow up, 
though the flowers that blossomed in the 
prim and formal inclosures of the " Monthly 
Anthology" and the "Portfolio" seem to our 
eyes but a pale and sickly product. Even 
for history something was being done. The 
events of the Revolution, still fresh in re- 
membrance, were commemorated in several 
histories, of which one, at least, — that writ- 
ten by the Rev. William Gordon, — was of 
great excellence. Biographies of those who 



84 HISTORICAL WRITING 

had taken a leading part in its events, such 
as Chief Justice Marshall's celebrated "Life 
of Washington," were in several instances 
written with so much care and information 
that they are among the most important 
historical authorities for the story of the 
War for Independence. Often, indeed, those 
earlier lives have for the student of to-day 
much more of the attraction of freshness 
and originality than the biographies written 
in our own time ; the writers of these latter 
have frequently so full a sense of the Amer- 
ican political history of ' which their subject 
forms a part that the individuality of the 
portrait is impaired by the attention paid to 
the background. 

There was also a third class of historical 
works, to which, in the first years of the re- 
public, important contributions were made. 
To our minds, the great glory of that period 
seems manifestly to be the attainment of 
national independence and national union. 
To the man of that day, inhabitant of a par- 
ticular State, and little accustomed to " think 
continentally," as the phrase was, the thought 
that his colony had become an independent 
and sovereign State was often quite as promi- 
nent, and was a source of pride and inspira- 



IN AMERICA. 85 

tion to a deofvee difficult for us to conceive. 
So it was that all at once, in several of the 
newly fledged States, zealous and sometimes 
able hands undertook the task of writing 
their histories. Several such works, of vari- 
ous degrees of merit, appeared during the 
interval between the two wars. Within two 
or three years after the conclusion of peace, 
David Eamsay, a doctor in Charleston, and 
member of the Continental Congress, pub- 
lished a history of South Carolina during 
the Revolutionary War, followed later by a 
history of the colony and State from the 
beginning, which has enjoyed and deserved 
a good reputation. Another ex-member of 
Congress, Hugh Williamson, published in 
1812 a history of North Carolina. In 1804 
came a history of Virginia by an Irish jour- 
nalist in that State, John Daly Burk. It 
cannot be highly praised. But the success 
of a book so extensive (four volumes) shows 
that, in that commonwealth and elsewhere, 
interest in history had advanced greatly 
since the time when poor Stith cut short the 
superabundant product of his pen because 
of inadequate support from " Persons of 
high Fortune and Distinction." A few years 
earlier came Robert Proud's valued " His- 

8 



86 HISTORICAL WRITING 

tory of Pennsylvania," and Benjamin Trum- 
bull's " History of Connecticut ; " while, in 
Massachusetts, George Minot wrote a con- 
tinuation of Hutchinson's history ; and in 
Georgia, Edward Langworthy prepared a 
history of that State, since lost. But the 
best of them all was the Rev. Jeremy Bel- 
knap's "History of New Hampshire," which, 
though published more than a hundred years 
ago, has never yet been superseded. Be- 
side his industry and fidelity as an investi- 
gator, Belknap had a singularly good style. 
He also edited and published two volumes 
of American biography, by various hands, 
which were of real service to American his- 
tory. 

Belknap's writings, however, are not his 
only, perhaps not his chief, title to recognition 
by our generation. Our principal debt to 
him is for his influence, which seems without 
doubt to have been the dominant influence, 
in founding the first of the local historical 
associations of America, the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, in January, 1791. This 
was in some degree the beginning of a new 
phase in the development of American his- 
tory, though by means of the same local 
channels through which, as has been said. 



IN AMERICA. 87 

the current of American historical work 
mostly ran during the generation succeeding 
the Revolution. It was the beginning of 
organized effort. The local historical socie- 
ties of the present time in the United States 
are in many cases far from being what we 
could wish them to be. Some are lifeless, 
or, like Pope and Pagan in Bunyan's alle- 
gory, are toothlessly mumbling over and over 
again the same innutritions materials ; some, 
that seem full of activity, direct that activ- 
ity toward any but the most scientific ends. 
But in their day they have certainly been of 
great use, and that in two ways : First, they 
have heightened and fostered by association 
the growing interest in American history, so 
long as that interest was mostly for colonial 
and local history, and until a wider interest 
should prevail. The local historical society 
has been, in Paul's phrase, our schoolmaster 
to lead us to the general study of American 
history ; the study of that national life which 
in Belknap's time had hardly begun, and 
which long remained latent or unattractive 
to the eye of local patriotism. 

In the second place, the historical socie- 
ties have done good service as collectors and 
publishers of historical materials. The sets 



88 HISTORICAL WRITING 

of publications of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society dating from 1792, and those 
of the New York Historical Society dating 
from 1811, are invaluable and indispensable. 
We smile a little over some of the contents 
of their early volumes, the remarkable arti- 
cles and bits of information which our naive 
great-grandfathers thought worth preserving, 
but which are to us as the poke bonnets and 
spinning-wheels of old garrets. But side by 
side with the topographical descriptions of 
towns, the copies of epitaphs, the accounts of 
the northern lights, and the letters from a 
gentleman recently returned from Niagara, 
there is a part — and really much the larger 
part — of the early work of these societies 
which is still valuable. Not only was it of a 
more scientific character than most of what 
had preceded it, but it was of peculiar value 
as establishing a certain tendency in our 
historical work ; a tendency, namely, to make 
the publication of materials as much an 
object of the historical scholar's care as the 
publication of results. The idea has, to be 
sure, been slow in taking root. Even at the 
present day it is but a very small part of the 
population of the United States that can be 
induced to believe the publication of dry 



IN AMERICA. 89 

records and documents, well edited, to be 
not only as useful as the publication of 
interesting books of history, but, as a gen- 
eral rule, considerably more useful. But in 
so far as the salutary notion has permeated 
the public mind, that happy result has been 
largely due to the wise efforts of those who, 
eighty or a hundred years ago, were estab- 
lishing the first local historical societies. A 
zeal for the collection and preservation of 
such materials at once arose, one of the first 
fruits of which was the " Annals of Amer- 
ica," which Dr. Abiel Holmes, father of Dr. 
Oliver Holmes, published in 1805. 

It creates some surprise to observe how 
little was done in the domain of American 
historical literature in the period between 
the end of the first administration of Jeffer- 
son, that golden age of the young republic 
and of the Democratic-Republican party, and 
the times of the rule of Jackson and the new 
Democracy. Esj)ecially singular, at first 
sight, is the absence of activity during the 
period immediately succeeding the War of 
1812 ; for, as has already been observed, such 
activity commonly ensues upon wars which 
have had an inspiring effect upon the na- 
tional consciousness. The War of 1812 was 



90 HISTORICAL WRITING 

anything but glorious, so far as military 
events were concerned. But, for all tliat, 
tlie popular consciousness was not mistaken 
in obtaining from it a powerful stimulus to 
national feeling. Its great result, unmen- 
tioned though it was in the Treaty of Ghent, 
was the immediate emancipation of the 
United States from colonial dependence on 
Europe, and from the colonial ideas which 
still lingered in their politics, and the se- 
curing to them of opportunity for unlimited 
development, on their own lines, of freedom 
to live their own life. 

How profoundly the national conscious- 
ness was affected by the opportunity and the 
responsibility of working out its own salva- 
tion may be seen even in the boastful con- 
fidence, the 'crude elation, the vociferous 
patriotism, and the national arrogance which 
were so painfully dominant in the America 
of fifty or sixty years ago, and to which 
we are wont to give colloquially the name 
of " Fourth of July." Undoubtedly, Amer- 
ica was inspired by the rapidly opening 
prospect of a boundless career. If the char- 
acteristic historical fruits of such inspira- 
tion were absent, or at any rate not present 
in any abundance, we must look for the 



IN AMERICA. 91 

explanation in that rapid expansion of the 
nation's material life which went on between 
1815 and 1830, and of which the immense 
westward emigration of those years is but a 
single though a most conspicuous sign. 

When historical literature did start into 
new life in the United States, such of it as 
was concerned with American history showed 
the influence of this popular impulse ; but 
for a while the time of flowering seemed 
to have been delayed. Usually, periods in 
which party politics have become quiescent 
are favorable to the growth of historical 
literature; and the age of Monroe, an era 
of good feeling among the people, though 
one of extremely bad feeling among the 
politicians, was such a period. But it should 
be remembered that the impulse of the new 
era was more likely to be felt by those who 
were boys at the time of the War of 1812 
than by their elders, and therefore would 
show its effects in literature at a somewhat 
later date. 

As we approach the consideration of the 
classical period of American historical lit- 
erature, we find ourselves confronted with a 
striking fact of geographical distribution. 
If we tried to name the ten principal historical 



92 HISTORICAL WRITING 

writers o£ that period, we should find that 
seven or eight of them were Massachusetts 
men, of old New England families, born in 
or near Boston, and graduated at Harvard 
College. How are we to account for this 
extraordinary localization of our science? 
Of course there are those general causes 
which produced the remarkable fertility of 
New England in good literature at that time, 
and made Boston for so long a period our 
literary centre, — the greater prevalence of 
urban life in New England; the indelible 
intensities of Puritan blood ; the inherited 
traditions of a capital city continuously lit- 
erary from its origin, and of our oldest col- 
lege ; the stimulating influence of the recent 
Unitarian revolt, and the resulting contro- 
versies ; that leaven of buoyant energy in 
political and literary thought which infused 
the world in or about the revolutionary year 
1830 ; and other such general causes. But 
more special explanations are required, for 
in the case of other sciences and branches of 
learning we do not find such a proportion 
obtainino-. The other muses were not thus 
partial to that one city and region ; for 
instance, if political economy has a muse, 
she was not. Doubtless, something was due 



IN AMERICA. 93 

to the presence of libraries. History is per- 
haps more dependent upon these than any 
other of the departments of literature or 
science then studied. Large libraries could 
be found only in those parts of the country 
where there were cities, and Boston and 
Cambridge, side by side, with the libraries 
of the Boston Athenaeum and of Harvard 
College, and later the Boston Public Library, 
were of all our cities the best provided in 
this respect. Here, therefore, it might have 
been expected that historians would con- 
gregate, and it has been so. There is one 
spot of a few acres in Cambridge upon which 
three of the most eminent historical scholars 
of the last generation dwelt, and on which 
have dwelt three of the most prominent his- 
torical writers of our own time. 

But there was still another reason why 
history should spring up and flourish in 
New England, and that was a political one. 
Throughout our political history we have 
had two parties which, under various names, 
have preserved an essential identity. They 
are usually described as the party of loose 
construction and the party of strict construc- 
tion. This is describing them with refer- 
ence to their attitude toward the Constitu- 



94 HISTORICAL WRITING 

tion only. A more penetrating analysis will 
discover in them the party of political mea- 
sures and the party of political principles, — 
a party with a programme and a party with 
a creed. The Democratic party, during its 
long history, has been mainly marked by its 
adherence to a certain definite set of politi- 
cal principles. The average American citi- 
zen, in quiet times, has had no other polit- 
ical platform than those principles, and has 
therefore remained a member of the Demo- 
cratic party. But from time to time there 
has arisen, out of this mass of Americans 
unanimous in adhesion to American political 
principles, a body of men eventually consti- 
tuting a great party, united in devotion to 
some great political measure or set of mea- 
sures, in effort, that is, to alter or add to our 
political fabric. The Federalist party arose, 
with a strong sense of work to be done, 
made its contribution by cementing the Union 
more firmly, and subsided into the mass of 
Democracy. With other purposes, but still 
with j)urposes of contribution and of alter- 
ation, the Whig party arose, did its work, 
and dissolved. Still a third time, the desire 
for measures restricting slavery and consoli- 
dating still more firmly the national Union 



IN AMERICA. 95 

drew together a great party which has left 
its impress indelibly upon our national in- 
stitutions. Parties marked by this devotion 
to given political measures will infallibly 
be loose-constructionist in their view of the 
fundamental document, as will any body of 
men, acting under a given instrument, whose 
main desire is to get certain specific things 
done; the party of political principles mean- 
while adheres to a strict construction. 

Now there must of necessity be a radical 
difference between these two, and between 
any two bodies of population in which they 
are respectively dominant, in regard to their 
attitude toward history. The abstract prin- 
ciples of political philosophy may be sup- 
posed to remain ever the same. To the 
purely legal view of the strict-construction- 
ist, based on these principles, the fundamen- 
tal relations of politics remain unchanged. 
That which was the Constitution in 1789 is 
the Constitution in 1891 ; and what it is, is 
to be found by logical reasoning from po- 
litical principles. The advocate of a pro- 
gramme of measures, of political change, on 
the other hand, will be constantly recurring 
to notions of development. To the practical 
aims which are foremost in his mind, the 



96 HISTORICAL WRITING 

study of human experience will be of the 
most direct service, and he and his will 
incline to historical ways of thinking and 
to historical studies. It is not an accident 
that the founder of the Democratic party, 
with all his interest in science, in philoso- 
phy, and in the theory of politics, was but 
little addicted to the study of history ; while 
his rival, the first Federalist President, was, 
of all the statesmen of his time and country, 
the most learned in that department. 

To come, then, to the application. Our 
explanation of the concentration of histori- 
cal science in the northeastern corner of our 
country is, in addition to the general rea- 
sons for its literary fertility, that the politi- 
cal predilections of the region were such as 
made the study of human history natural 
and congenial there. As New England was 
the chief seat of the Federalist, the Whig, 
and the Eepublican parties, the chosen abode 
of loose construction, it was natural that it 
should also be the chosen abode of historical 
science ; for no man can escape sharing the 
interests which political or economical condi- 
tions have made most vivid in those around 
him. We may be confirmed in our view by 
observing that, in respect to writings of a 



IN AMERICA. 97 

purely political or economical character, the 
superiority of the South in both quantity 
and quality was no less incontestable. As 
for Massachusetts in especial, it may be 
observed that in a State where public spirit 
has always been so strong, — in other words, 
in a State where the interests and life of the 
community have been so highly regarded by 
individuals, — a deep interest in the life and 
the progressive development of communities 
is likely to follow. 

But before passing to the consideration of 
our principal schools of classical historians, 
it may be well to say a word concerning one 
who belongs to neither North or South, — 
Washington Irving. We need not speak of 
him at great length, for his strictly historical 
works were few, and his fame was mainly 
achieved in other walks of literature. Nor 
did he have a great influence upon the de- 
velopment of historical writing among us, 
unless in the way of general influence upon 
American style. In fact, it is quite possible 
that no one of his mature and sober pieces 
of writing had as much real effect on the 
progress of American historiography as the 
admirable humorous composition with which 
he began, as far back as 1809, — the '• His- 



98 HISTORICAL WRITING 

tory of New York" by Dietrich Knicker- 
bocker. Aside from its striking success as 
a literary production, the book had a great 
effect in awakening interest in the early or 
Dutch period of New York history. De- 
scendants rushed with sober indignation to 
the defense of ancestors at whom the genial 
humorist poked his fun, and very likely the 
great amount of work which the state gov- 
ernment in the next generation did for the 
historical illustration of the Dutch period, 
through the researches of Mr. Brodhead in 
foreign archives, had this unhistorical little 
book for one of its principal causes. But, 
on the other hand, he made it permanently 
difficult for the American public to take a 
serious view of those early Dutch days. 
Oloffe the Dreamer and Walter the Doubter, 
Abraham with the ten breeches and Stuyve- 
sant with the wooden leg, have become too 
thoroughly domesticated among us to admit 
of that. 

In 1828 appeared the " Life and Voyages 
of Columbus." The short time in which it 
was prepared, not more at any rate than two 
years, shows that it cannot have been a work 
of original research carried out absolutely 
after the modern manner. It was in fact 



IN AMERICA. 99 

based on the documentary publications of 
Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, though 
with much use of the libraries of Obadiah 
Rich, then our consul at Madrid, of Na- 
varrete himself, of the Duke of Veragua, and 
of the Council of the Indies, and of other 
libraries at Madrid and Seville. The result 
was an excellent piece of historical work, as 
well as a literary production which it would 
be superfluous to praise. At about the same 
time the author proposed a series of writings 
on the Arabs in Spain, beginning with some 
account of Mohammed himself. The fruit 
of this project, the book entitled " Mahomet 
and his Successors," made no pretensions to 
original research, and appeared, as did the 
" Life of Washington," many years after the 
period which we have been considering. 

The very fact that we pass over books not 
based on original research shows of itself 
that the period which we are approaching 
was one marked by higher ideals of histor- 
ical scholarship than had prevailed before. 
When this classical period of American his- 
torical writing does arrive, it is found to 
be marked from the first by two separate 
tendencies ; there are, we may almost say, 
two schools, distinct throughout the period. 



100 HISTORICAL WRITING 

On the one hand, we have the historians 
who have devoted themselves to pictur- 
esque themes lying outside the history of 
the United States, — men whose traditions 
and associations have been mainly literary, 
of whom Prescott, Motley, and Parkman are 
the types. On the other hand, there are the 
historians who have interested themselves in 
American affairs, whose associations and im- 
pulses have in many cases been in a great 
degree political, but who have been more 
especially the inheritors of those impulses al- 
ready spoken of as marking the early years 
of the century. The chief example of this 
last division is George Bancroft, whose hon- 
ored life was so exceptionally prolonged that 
he was enabled to give to one great work the 
labor of fifty years, an experience unex- 
ampled in the annals of historical literature. 
The first volume of his " History of the 
United States " was published in 1834 ; the 
author's last revision was put forth in 1883 ; 
and he died but a few months ago, at the age 
of ninety, having lived almost as many years 
as Ranke, and with as severe an industry. 

If we S23eak of the product of his long 
period of labor in connection with the date 
of its commencement rather than of its close, 



IN AMERICA. 101 

it is because the work, from its very begin- 
ning, has not ceased to bear some marks of 
an origin in the year 1834. At that time 
Mr. Bancroft was thirty-four years old. 
Graduated early from Harvard, he had next 
had the privilege of university training in 
Germany. This was in those days a very 
unusual opportunity. It is amusing to read 
of the difficulties which, at the modern 
Athens itself, George Ticknor encountered 
in 1813 in preliminary movements toward 
a course of study at Gottingen. "I was 
sure," he relates, " that I should like to 
study at such a university, but it was in vain 
that I endeavored to get farther knowledge 
upon the subject. I would gladly have pre- 
pared for it by learning the language I 
should have to use there, but there was no 
one in Boston who could teach me. . . . Nor 
was it possible to get books. I borrowed a 
Meidinger's Grammar, French and German, 
from my friend Mr. Everett, and sent to 
New Hampshire, where 1 knew there was 
a German Dictionary, and procured it. I 
also obtained a copy of Goethe's ' Werther,' 
in German, . . . from amongst Mr. J. Q. 
Adams's books, deposited by him, on going 
to Europe, in the Athenaeum," etc. 



102 HISTORICAL WRITING 

This was in 1813, and it cannot have been 
much different in 1818, when Bancroft went 
to Gottingen. The two years spent there 
seem to have been given to quite general 
studies. In such studies as were historical, 
it is not to be thought that in the days be- 
fore Ranke had appeared, and before any 
permanent work of Niebuhr had been pub- 
lished, it was possible to find in Germany 
such inspiration for historical studies as in 
times more recent, even had the young Amer- 
ican yet resolved upon such studies. What 
could be obtained was a much better know- 
ledge of methods and results than America 
afforded. Of those historians under whom 
Bancroft studied, Heeren, Savigny, Schlos- 
ser, one cannot in his History find trace of 
much influence, except that Heeren's interest 
in the history of colonies and of their reflex 
action upon the mother country probably 
bore fruit later. Of method he may have 
earned much from these teachers ; his ideas 
were derived elsewhere, and mainly, in truth, 
from the soil from which they sprang. They 
are the ideas of America in the year 1834. 
The extraordinary popularity of the early 
volumes can be accounted for only in view of 
this fact. For the popularity of the later 



IN AMERICA. 103 

volumes, it is not necessary to resort to any- 
other exjjlanation than that of the enormous 
amount of labor and care expended on them, 
the very unusual facilities in respect to ac- 
cess to archives and masses of correspond- 
ence which the author's diplomatic positions 
afforded him, and the encyclopaedic full- 
ness and minuteness of his knowledge of 
his subject. But for the earlier volumes 
these explanations fail ns. If they surpassed 
in research and scientific value the averagfe 
of that time, they were still not highly re- 
markable in those respects. And yet the 
tenth edition of the first volume was pub- 
lished within ten years of the date of the 
original edition. The book at once took 
rank as the standard history of the United 
States. Thousands and thousands of copies 
have since been sold. At Washington, upon 
the doors of the Senate and House of Re- 
presentatives, its writer's name has long ap- 
peared, almost the sole name of a private 
person in the brief list of those to whom 
our legislative bodies have given the privi- 
lege of entrance upon their floors. 

Whence did this immediate and un- 
bounded popularity and acceptance arise ? 
Mainly, I believe, from the fact that the his- 



104 HISTORICAL WRITING 

toi'ian caught, and with sincere and enthusi- 
astic conviction repeated to the American 
people, the things which they were saying 
and thinking concerning themselves. One 
need not imitate the professional scorn of 
the Pharisee and declare that the people 
that knoweth not the esoteric law is cursed, 
and yet may freely hold the opinion that 
the popularity of a work of national history 
does not depend on the profundity and skill 
of its research, nor on the correctness and 
completeness of its results, nor even on its 
qualities of arrangement and style, so much 
as on the acceptableness to the national 
mind of the general idea which it exhibits 
in regard to the nation's development. Ban- 
croft's first volume succeeded mainly because 
it was redolent of the ideas of the new 
Jacksonian democracy, — its exuberant con- 
fidence, its uncritical self -laudation, its op- 
timistic hopes. The Demos heard, as an 
undercurrent to his narrative, the same 
music which charmed its ears in the Fourth 
of July oration ; indeed, many of Bancroft's 
most characteristic ideas are to be found in 
his own oration pronounced at Northampton 
on July 4, 1826 ; and the style was one whose 
buoyancy of rhetoric was well suited to those 



IN AMERICA. 105 

sanguine times. It would be but a shallow 
criticism that should see in all this only the 
ebullition of national vanity. The uncriti- 
cal patriotism of those times, as of other 
times in the course of history, was in some 
respects admirable, and in many respects 
useful. But we need not forget that it was 
uncritical. The opening words of the intro- 
duction to the book will serve as well as any 
to exhibit what is meant : — 

" The United States of America [it be- 
gins] constitute an essential portion of a 
great political system, embracing all the civ- 
ilized nations of the earth. [This bears the 
stamp of Heeren's ideas.] At a period when 
the force of moral opinion is rapidly increas- 
ing, they have the precedence in the prac- 
tice and the defense of the equal rights of 
man. The sovereignty of the people is here 
a conceded axiom, and the laws, established 
upon that basis, are cherished with faithful 
patriotism. While the nations of Europe 
aspire after change, our Constitution en- 
gages the fond admiration of the people by 
which it has been established. . . . Our gov- 
ernment, by its organization, is necessarily 
identified with the interests of the people, 
and relies exclusively on their attachment 



106 HISTORICAL WRITING 

for its durability and support. Even the 
enemies of the state, if there are any among 
us, have liberty to express their opinions 
undisturbed, and are safely tolerated where 
reason is left free to combat their errors. 
Nor is the Constitution a dead letter, unal- 
terably fixed ; it has the capacity for im- 
provement, adopting whatever changes time 
and the public will may require, and safe 
from decay, so long as that will retains its 
energy. . . . Other governments are con- 
vulsed by the innovations and reforms of 
neighboring states ; our Constitution, fixed 
in the affections of the people, from whose 
choice it has sprung, neutralizes the influ- 
ence of foreign principles, and fearlessly 
opens an asylum to the virtuous, the unfor- 
tunate, and the oppressed of every nation." 

The passage is typical, both as to style 
and as to doctrine. Its sincerity is so mani- 
fest that it is impossible not to admire and 
be touched by its ardent Americanism, its 
faith in popular government, in the Ameri- 
can Constitution, and in the boundless success 
of the United States through material prog- 
ress and the simple arts of peace. But a 
generation which has grown accustomed to 
less use of literary as well as other stimulants 



IN AMERICA. 107 

probably finds its eloquence somewhat tur- 
gid, and tempers its enthusiasm with the 
sadder consciousness of a success less perfect 
than was anticipated. The same qualities 
and the same defects are to be found in all 
the subsequent volumes of the work ; up to 
its completion in 1885, it still continued, as 
our phrase is, to vote for Jackson. But if 
there had been, meantime, no change in the 
fundamental principles, there was a great 
improvement in the workmanship. It is 
sufficient evidence of this to point to the 
rate of production of the individual volumes. 
The first three volumes appeared in 1834, 
1837, and 1840; the next three, after a 
period of political and diplomatic life, in 
1852, 1853, and 1854; the seventh and 
eighth, at intervals a little greater ; the ninth, 
not until 1866 ; the tenth, in 1874 ; the two 
concluding volumes, as late as 1882. 

From 1846 to 1849, the historian was our 
minister to England, and from 1866 to 1874 
he was minister in Germany. The result 
was the collection of an enormous mass of 
material from the archives of foreign states, 
and from the stores of family correspond- 
ence. Because of the long duration and 
the great fame of his researches, similar 



108 HISTORICAL WRITING 

opportunities, almost unlimited in extent, 
were at liis service in this country. Some- 
times his narrative seems too much domi- 
nated by the possession of the abundant 
materials of this class to v^hich his prefaces 
refer with so conscious a pride. The last 
volumes are limited in scope, giving a his- 
tory of little but military and diplomatic 
movements during the Revolution. Perhaps 
it is as well. Bancroft's talents for the nar- 
ration of military and diplomatic history 
were of a very high order. He had great 
skill in marshalling large arrays of facts, 
good judgment, and a lucid and picturesque 
style. On the other hand, a history of pop- 
ular movements, of public opinion and of the 
internal development of the United States, 
would exhibit at the greatest disadvantage 
the author's faults, — not only his loud and 
uncritical Americanism and his rhetorical 
bias, but the superficiality of his insight into 
national psychology, his failure to perceive 
its complexities, his tendency to convention- 
alize, to compose his American populations 
of highly virtuous Noah's-ark men. The ex- 
cursuses in which he attempts this are among 
the least happy and adequate portions of his 
work. 



IN AMERICA. 



109 



An interesting though far from pleasing 
episode in the history of Bancroft's labors 
was the chapter of controversies with critics. 
A slighting remark respecting a predecessor, 
in the second volume of the history, had 
drawn upon the historian the wrath of the 
old president of Harvard College, who soon 
showed that his Federalist pen had not lost 
itsincisiveness and vigor. For reasons partly 
personal, partly political, Bancroft was highly 
unpopular in the literary society of Boston, 
and not a few attacks followed. The ninth 
volume of the history, dealing with a great 
part of the military history of the Revolution, 
aroused an especially large number of as- 
sailants. Descendants of Greene, Reed, 
Schuyler, and Sullivan, in able pamphlets, 
attempted to show that the historian had 
dealt unjustly with their respective ancestors. 
The historian was so much superior to his 
critics in knowledge and skill, that in most 
cases he seemed to come off victorious from 
the encounter. But the careful reader of 
this mass of controversial literature will 
probably feel that a good number of the 
criticisms made were just, especially as con- 
cerned Bancroft's use of quotations, which 
he sometimes so excises and transposes as 



10 



110 HISTORICAL WRITING 

strangely to pervert their meaning. He will 
note, too, the haughtiness and acerbity of 
temper with which criticisms were received, 
the slender recognition of fellow-laborers, 
and, where criticisms had been supported 
by proof, the grudging and minimized ac- 
knowledgment of error. But, in spite of 
all these defects, the American people owe a 
great debt to the famous historian who has 
just departed, after a long lifetime spent in 
enthusiastic study and inspiring exposition 
of their history. 

A few words should be said concerning 
some other writers of the period, who gave 
themselves to the sober field of American his- 
tory. It would be pleasant to be able to say 
more than a word of Peter Force, of whose 
great collection of the " American Archives " 
Congress published nine volumes and then 
stopped. To the lasting disgrace of Con- 
gress, all subsequent efforts have failed to 
obtain appropriations for the completion of 
this monumental work. The work of collec- 
tion and publication was carried on in more 
varied ways by President Sparks. In making 
his large collections in America and Europe, 
and in editing the " Library of American 
Biography," the writings of Washington and 



IN AMERICA. Ill 

Franklin, and the " DIjilomatic Correspond- 
ence of the Revolution," he performed ser- 
vices of inestimable value to American his- 
tory. That he at the same time did it no 

^small disservice by his mode of editing, as 
when he toned down the actual words of 
Washington into tame correctness, was 
vigorously charged by Lord Mahon and 
others. Sparks's letters in answer to Ma- 
hon were models of dignified reply to 
criticism. The view of the controversy 
which would now be taken is, probably, that 
President Sparks did not conform to all 
the best rules of editing as they were then 
known. It is quite true that he ought not 
to be judged by the more exacting standards 
of the present day ; yet 1833, when Ranke 
was already teaching and writing, and the 
'' Monumenta " had begun to be published, 
was by no means in the dark ages of histori- 
cal method. But there was much exaggera- 
tion in the fault found with Sparks, and due 
recognition of his invaluable pioneer work 

I will prevent extreme censoriousness as to 
defects of workmanship. Gentle Washing- 
ton Irving thus alludes to the fault, when 
speaking of these letters in the preface of 
his " Life of Washington ; " — 



112 HISTORICAL WRITING 

" A careful collation of many of them 
with the originals [Sparks had to work from 
the letter-books mostly] convinced me of the 
general correctness of the collection, . . . 
and I am happy to bear this testimony to 
the essential accuracy of one whom I con- 
sider among the greatest benefactors to our 
national literature." 

Downright Hildreth alluded to it in terms 
more direct. 

Hildreth's own work came later, — late 
enough to feel the force of increasing sec- 
tional animosities, and to show the effects of 
them in an unfortunate degree. A man of 
very decided convictions, and ardently in- 
terested in politics, the Whig editor wrote 
the " History of the United States " with a 
strong partisan bias. In the first three vol- 
umes, bringing the story down to the close 
of the Revolution, this naturally finds less 
place, and the lucidity, directness, and accu- 
racy of the writer made his book one of much 
value, though a little dry to the general 
reader. But in the last three volumes, treat- 
ing the history of our national politics down 
to 1821, its partisanship of the Federalists 
is so manifest that all its lucidity, directness, 
and general accuracy cannot wholly redeem 



JN AMERICA. 113 

it. If for Federalists we substitute Demo- 
crats, we shall have to say much the same 
things of the otherwise excellent " History 
of the United States" to 1841, which 
George Tucker of Virginia published, just 
before the outbreak of the Civil War. In 
1859 and 1860 appeared the first two vol- 
umes of the "History of New England" by 
John Gorham Palfrey, as good a piece of 
work as had ever been done among us ; but 
it belongs quite as much to the next period, 
in which the remaining volumes were pub- 
lished ; and it is time to turn to the writers 
of what I have called another school. 

It was something more than a difference 
of subject that separated the writers already 
characterized from Prescott and Motley. A 
difference of attitude underlay the difference 
in choice of subject. The impulses which ac- 
tuated the former were founded, sometimes 
in political but at any rate in national feel- 
ings. Those of the latter were rather those 
of the literary man. It was only after long 
hesitation and with some regret that Pres- 
cott abandoned the plan of devoting himself 
entirely to the history of literature. He 
was averse to politics, though the historians 
of Europe have seldom been more engaged 



114 HISTORICAL WRITING 

in them than they were in his time. His 
correspondence and his prefaces show us 
how much the literary aspect of his work 
occupied him ; truthful and artistic narration 
was his main aim. Writers of such predi- 
lections as these would be likely to turn away 
from the sober history of their own country, 
and seek their themes in the more pictur- 
esque fields of European history. The choice 
of subjects which Prescott made gives the 
plainest evidence of such purposes. Even 
apart from the brilliant treatment which 
his genius gave them, and from which it is 
hard for our minds now to separate them, it 
is plain that the reign of Ferdinand and 
Isabella, the conquest of Mexico, the con- 
quest of Peru, the history of Philip the 
Second, were subjects eminently capable of 
picturesque treatment. 

The reader's interest in the volumes writ- 
ten upon these engaging themes is height- 
ened by the knowledge of the difficulties 
surmounted in their preparation. Like 
three other eminent historians, his contem- 
poraries, Augustin Thierry, Karl Szayno- 
cha, and the Marquis Gino Capponi, he was 
blind, or nearly so. Everett, speaking at 
the memorial meeting of the Massachusetts 



7^ A3IEEICA. 115 

Historical Society just after his death, beau- 
tifully applied to him the words of the Greek 
poet, " Greatly the Muse loved him, and she 
gave him both good and evil ; she deprived 
him of his eyes, but gave him the gift of 
sweet song." Only during the composition 
of the second of his books, " The Conquest 
of Mexico," was he able to make any consid- 
erable use of his eyes. During a part of the 
ten years given to the preparation of the 
" History of Ferdinand and Isabella," and 
of the time spent on the " Conquest of Peru," 
he could use them for an hour or two each 
day. During the rest of the time, including 
the whole period given to the " History of 
Philip the Second," he was forced to rely 
entirely upon the eyes of others. In fact, 
his investigations for the first of his books 
began by going through seven quarto vol- 
umes in Spanish, with a reader who un- 
derstood not a word of the language. Bet- 
ter assistance was eventually procured, and 
great amounts of reading were done. The 
writing machine now preserved in the cabi- 
net of the Massachusetts Historical Soci- 
ety was obtained, and released the patient 
scholar from the necessity of constant dic- 
tation. Fortunately, he possessed ample 



116 HISTORICAL WRITING 

means for the purchase of books. The con- 
sultation of foreign archives in person was, 
indeed, impracticable. But, through the 
kindness and exertions of devoted friends, 
of whom his amiable and winning character 
had attracted a large number, this obstacle 
was in a great degree removed, and the suc- 
cessive narratives rest on an increasing am- 
plitude of original and unpublished docu- 
ments, drawn not only from public and 
private repositories in Spain, but in the case 
of Philip the Second from most of the great 
collections of Western Europe. But, for 
all this, the writing of these eleven volumes 
under such disabilities remains a most re- 
markable achievement, and one which bears 
strong testimony to the high qualities of 
Prescott's character. 

The books themselves need no factitious 
interest arising from the knowledge of the 
circumstances of their production. They are 
too admirable and too familiar to need praise 
in respect to interest of narrative, grace of 
style, or artistic skill in the management and 
marshaling of the various parts. The unity 
of design and beauty of detail, the romantic 
charm and picturesqueness which the author 
sought, he certainly obtained. Scarcely less 



IN AMERICA. 117 

praise must be given to the conscientiousness 
of his research, though it may be doubted 
whether his critical insight was of the most 
penetrating sort. Nor was he a profoundly 
philosophical historian, distinguished for 
searching analysis. In one of his early 
private memoranda, he confesses that he 
hates "hunting up latent, barren antiquities," 
and though he later, to some extent, con- 
quered this repugnance, the studies which 
make the analytical and sociological historian 
were never thoroughly congenial to him. It 
is mainly the concrete aspects of life that 
engage his interest, and as a historical painter 
of these, he was, in the period of the publica- 
tion of his works, the years from 1837 to 
1858, without a rival, save Macaulay and 
Michelet. 

In the preface to the first volume of his 
" Philip the Second," confessing the diffi- 
culty of imparting unity of interest to a 
narrative which must necessarily embrace 
topics so various, Prescott had alluded par- 
ticularly to the subject of the revolt of the 
Netherlands. He had said that, though but 
an episode to his own subject, this alone 
might well form the theme of a separate and 
extensive work, and had announced that 



118 HISTORICAL WRITING 

before long such a work might be " ex- 
pected," to use his own words, " from the 
pen of our accomplished countryman, Mr. J. 
Lothrop Motley, who, during the last few 
years, for the better prosecution of his labors, 
has established his residence in the neighbor- 
hood of the scenes of his narrative." The 
work thus announced, the famous " Rise of 
the Dutch Republic," was published in 1856. 
Accordingly when, in 1859, Prescott died, 
leaving his " History of Philip the Second " 
no farther advanced than to the year 1580, 
the historian who should in a sense continue 
his work was already in the field. The first 
of Motley's works carried down to the year 
1584 a narrative whose subject, though not 
the same as that of Prescott's last work, 
necessarily had much in common with it. 
For the history of the Dutch revolt against 
Philip could hardly be written without say- 
ing much concerning other aspects or por- 
tions of his reign. In the year 1860 ap- 
peared the first two, in 1868 the last two, 
volumes of the "History of the United 
Netherlands," embracing the years 1584 to 
1609. "The Life and Death of John of 
Barneveld," a work in form biographical, 
but really continuing the " History of the 



IN AMERICA. 119 

Netliei'lands " for a decade more, appeared 
in 1874. 

Enormous labors in the investigation of 
archives were performed in the preparation 
of these books. Motley had the intense zeal^ 
of the born investigator, a rare and heroic 
quality of^whTch' the world takes little note 
in historians. He had likewise in full pos- 
session those qualities which engage the 
reader. No American has ever written a 
history more brilliant and dramatic. The 
subject was a noble one. It was full of 
picturesque incident, of opportunities for 
glowing description, of thrilling tales of 
heroism. But it was not simply these that 
so engaged Motley's interest that, as he 
afterwards said, he felt as if he must write 
upon it. It was a great national conflict for 
freedom, and as such was profoundly con- 
genial to one who, above all things, loved 
liberty. The warm heart and enthusiastic, 
ardent temper of the historian laid him open 
to dangers of partiality which, it must be 
confessed, he was far from wholly escaping. 
The American public little appreciate the 
extent to which he was influenced by such 
feelings. Guizot, in a review article, noted 
Motley's advocacy, but thought it too appa- 



120 HISTORICAL WRITING 

rent to do harm, and excused it as being on 
the right side, that of political and religious 
liberty. Throughout the volumes on the 
" Rise of the Dutch Republic," Motley is a 
thorough partisan of William the Silent, — 
a sincere and conscientious partisan, to be 
sure, but a partisan none the less. Some 
may think that it is little harm to exaggerate 
the virtues of William the Silent, or to 
soften the defects of a character so heroic ; 
but certainly it is a pity to add one more to 
the long chain of English writers who, out 
,of_ ancestral prejudice, have dealt hard meas- 
ure to all Spaniards. Similarly, in his nar- 
rative of the great internal contest between 
the adherents of Prince Maurice and the 
adherents of Oldenbarneveld, the Calvinists 
and the Arminians, it must be declared de- 
liberately that Motley is a partisan of the 
latter, and is distinctly unfair to the former. 
It is easy to see the reasons in both cases. 
As a lover of liberty, the cause of William 
and the Netherlanders, fighting for freedom, 
engaged his warm affection. In the later 
period, his Unitarian sympathies made it 
natural for him to embrace the cause of 
the Arminians against the Calvinists. Dr. 
Holmes, to be sure, in his memoir of Motley, 



IN AMERICA. 121 

defends liim from this latter charge. The 
Dutch historian, Groen van Prinsterer, in 
his " Maurice et Barneveld," though express- 
ing a warm admiration for Motley, has criti- 
cised him as unfair to the Remonstrant 
cause. With his usual keen scent for Cal- 
vinism, the doctor endeavors to show that 
Mr. Groen van Prinsterer has taken up this 
position because he is himself a Calvinist. 
But Mr. Groen van Prinsterer does not 
stand alone. It should not be forgotten that, 
if none of the Dutch historical writers were 
as brilliant as Motley, the nation stood, in 
historical scholarship, hardly second to any 
in Europe ; five historians could be named 
every one of whom was probably as learned 
in the facts as Motley himself. The dispute 
is, in the end, one for the Dutch to settle, 
and Dutch opinion is still divided. But so 
long as the leading opinions are in general 
more moderate than Motley's, and so long 
as the Dutch are not '' vehemently suspected " 
of having more of the ardent temper of the 
advocate than Motley had, we may feel justi- 
fied in mingling a certain sense of partiality 
with our strong admiration of his warmth, 

his brilliancy, and his dramatic force. 

11 



122 HISTORICAL WRITING 



IV. 

THE PEKIOD SINCE 1861. 

We were able to make a sharp division 
between tlie first period in the history of 
American historical writing and the second ; 
the first chapter including writers who were 
themselves of the emigrating generation, 
while in the second none were included who 
were separated from the original settlers by 
a less interval than two generations. Simi- 
larly, the second period was plainly separated 
from the third by the revolutionary war, 
during the distresses and troubles of which 
there was little leisure for historical or other 
composition. The historical literature of the 
colonial period was confined to a few spo- 
radic writers, not organically connected one 
with another; it had not acquired momen- 
tum enough to carry it in continuous life 
across that time of difficulty and preoccupy- 
ing care. 

But with the third and fourth periods the 
case is different. American historical liter- 



IN AMERICA. 123 

ature had now acquired vitality, and hence- 
forth its development was uninterrupted. If, 
therefore, we select any chronological point 
at which to divide this last and most impor- 
tant period, the point chosen will necessarily 
seem from some points of view an arbitrary 
one. It is quite true that the civil war 
formed the starting point for many new 
tendencies in our historical, as in our gen- 
eral literature. But, on the other hand, 
much went on as before. In the first place, 
some of the histories spoken of in the last 
paper, though begun before the war, were 
not completed until after it. The first two 
volumes of Motley's " History of the United 
Netherlands " had appeared in 1860 ; the 
last two were published in 1868 ; and his 
" Barneveld," which is virtually a continua- 
tion of them, in 1874. Another work, whose 
publication similarly overlapped the fourth 
period, was Palfrey's " History of New Eng- 
land," probably the best single large piece 
of work that has been done in America on 
any part of our colonial period. After much 
labor in America and considerable research 
in England, the first and second volumes had 
been successively published just before the 
war broke out. The third did not foUow 



124 HISTORICAL WRITING 

until 1865 ; the fourth, not until 1875. At 
the writer's death the history of the New 
England colonies had been brought down to 
the year 1740 ; the fifth volume, recently 
published, carries it to the outbreak of the 
Ke volution. If Dr. Palfrey was not a man 
of great insight into popular movements, and 
was too constant an apologist of the rulers of 
New England, his book was nevertheless 
admirable on account of his extensive know- 
ledge of sources, his industry, clearness, ac- 
curacy, and skill in narration. Among its 
many excellences, one which deserves par- 
ticular notice is the degree of attention which 
it bestows upon the history of England itself 
during the Puritan era, and upon the mutual 
influence of Old England and New England 
during that period of exceptionally close 
sympathy and connection. Often the genius 
of a writer is quite as much displayed by 
new apportionments of their relative amounts 
of attention to the different aspects of his 
subject as in any other way, for thus his 
insight into the proportions and relations of 
various factors is practically displayed. 

Meanwhile, other historians, not in the 
field during the preceding period, have con- 
tinued the traditions of the school which has 



IN AMERICA. 125 

been described in a previous article under 
the names of Prescott and Motley. An es- 
pecially close example of this is the case of 
John Foster Kirk, who was one of the pri- 
vate secretaries successively employed by 
Prescott, and who, after Prescott's death, 
wrote a valuable book upon the " History of 
Charles the Bold," a contribution in the 
same general field as that of his master's 
labors. But the author who has most con- 
spicuously continued the school of pictur- 
esque historians is Francis Parkman, the 
eminent historian of the French dominion 
in North America. 

The subject is one highly attractive to an 
American historical writer of this school, 
who wishes at the same time that his studies 
shall not be too remote from his own age and 
country. Chivalry and heroism and romantic 
adventure, the glamour of a foreign civiliza- 
tion and the poetic charm of unfamiliar 
forms of religion, are all there ; but the story 
has also a close and important relation with 
the growth of our own nation. Prescott 
had been able to impart an additional in- 
terest to his " History of Ferdinand and 
Isabella " because of the episode formed by 
the voyages of Columbus ; and perhaps Mot- 



126 HISTORICAL WRITING 

ley's history of the struggle of the Dutch 
for independence may have had a special 
interest for the general reader in a country 
of whose history a struggle for independence 
is one of the most familiar portions. Pres- 
cott, too, had chosen distinctly American 
subjects in his " Conquest of Mexico " and 
his " Conquest of Peru." But no one of 
these had so direct a bearing on our national 
history as the story of New France. For 
several generations some of the most impor- 
tant English colonies were occasionally men- 
aced and always limited by the presence 
upon their frontier of a considerable military 
power established there by a nation usually 
unfriendly. Furthermore, the presence of 
this power was one of the chief influences 
toward colonial consolidation, and its final 
removal was one of the causes which made 
possible the revolt from the government of 
Great Britain. It is therefore with good 
reason that the general title given to the 
whole series of Mr. Parkman's narratives is, 
'' France and England in North America." 
The project of a series of so wide a scope 
developed gradually in the writer's mind. 
Soon after graduation from college he had 
gone on several occasions to make more or 



IN AMERICA. 127 

less extensive visits to the wild regions o£ 
the Northwest. Much of his subsequent 
historical work shows the effects of the fa- 
miliarity thus gained with the scenery and 
men of the wilderness. One of these effects 
was the choice, for the subject of his first 
historical production, of the Conspiracy of 
Pontiac. It was from this work that the 
writer was led on to the preparation of a 
series of historical narratives upon the whole 
course of the French dominion in America, 
its relations to the English colonies, and its 
final destruction by the military power of 
Great Britain. For the history of Pontiac's 
conspiracy forms a natural sequel to the 
history of the French and Indian war, and 
to that of New France generally. 

This book completed, therefore, and pub- 
lished in 1851, the author went back to take 
up at the beginning the history of the French 
in. North America, the great task upon which 
he has been engaged ever since, and which 
is now nearly completed. As in the case of 
Prescott, physical difficulties which might 
well seem insurmountable opposed. Extreme 
ill health made it always necessary to con- 
fine mental exertion within narrow limits, 
and more than once stopped it entirely for 



128 HISTORICAL WRITING 

several years at a time. Weakness of sight 
seems to have made it always impossible to 
read or write continuously for much more 
than five minutes, while once, at least, it has 
been for a period of three years impossible 
to endure the light of day, or to read or 
write to the smallest extent. 

But the volumes composed under the pres- 
sure of these calamities need no indulgence 
from the critic. It may almost be said that 
they need no praise, so widely spread and so 
permanent has been their fame. The first 
of the series, though published only twenty- 
seven years ago, has already long passed its 
twentieth edition. Others are approaching 
it. The series has shown a continuous im- 
provement, and especially in thoroughness 
and fullness of research. It is in this respect, 
indeed, that American historians have, at 
the outset of their careers, been least ade- 
quately provided. In Germany the class of 
historical writers and the class of historical 
professors are so nearly identical that the 
young student who starts out upon a career 
of historical authorship has almost always 
the advantage of having learned his trade 
under a teacher experienced in it. In other 
words, with all the opportunity it presents, 



IN AMEBIC A. 129 

and tlie need it has for that genius and in- 
sight and maturity which can neither be 
communicated nor described, there are many 
things in the more technical portions of the 
pursuit which by long experience have been 
reduced to practical rules ; and these rules 
can be learned of a master, if only by imita- 
tion. But English and American historical 
writers have till lately worked so much in 
isolation that they could have no apprentice- 
ship in the communicable portions of the 
art. In the highly developed arts of re- 
search and of historical criticism, therefore, 
our historians have started out uninstructed, 
and have learned these as they went on, with 
no other teachers than their own mistakes 
and their constant desire for completeness. 
There has also been a great improvement in 
the always brilliant and engaging style of 
Mr. Parkman, which, with increasing years, 
has grown more severe in taste. 

The first book of the projected series was 
called " Pioneers of France in the New 
World." Its first part described in fascina- 
ting narrative the history of the Huguenot 
settlement in Florida, and its extinction by 
the Spanish ; the second took up the story 
of the permanent beginnings of the French 



130 HISTORICAL WRITING 

dominion, tlie settlement of Acadia, and tlie 
labors of Chamj^lain and his associates. The 
next volume, published two years later, con- 
tinues the story from 1635 to 1652, under 
the title of " The Jesuits in North America." 
For this volume especially, the author was 
able to make great use of his early acquired 
knowledge of Indian character and civiliza- 
tion ; the sublime devotion of the mission- 
aries and their heroic endurance of torture 
and martyrdom at the hands of the savages 
confer upon it an additional and most touch- 
ing interest. The next volume, " La Salle 
and the Discovery of the Great West," treats 
of an episode, though an episode whose con- 
sequences were at one time likely to be 
highly important. The volume called " The 
Old Regime in Canada " is devoted, after the 
narration of the history of the transitional 
period 1652-1672, to a description of Cana- 
dian government and life, in chapters care- 
fully based on original sources, and of sur- 
passing interest. The ablest of the colonial 
governors and the history down to 1701 
are treated in the volume called " Count 
Frontenac and New France under Louis 
XIV." The intermediate period to 1748 
having been left for the time being, Mr. 



IN AMERICA, 131 

Parkman has given us the conclusion in 
" Montcalm and Wolfe," two volumes, the 
best in the series, on that American portion 
of the seven years' war which we are wont 
to call the French and Indian war. 

It will be seen how wide is the range of 
interest covered by these volumes. They 
are not simply a history of a great attempt 
to create, under the forms of absolute mon- 
archy, feudalism, and Catholicism, a central- 
ized and military power. Nor are they 
simply a history of the efforts of that power 
to overbalance and check the system of free, 
Protestant and English colonies, unorganized 
and discordant indeed, but strong with the 
strength of popular institutions, of love of 
freedom, and of habits of individual initia- 
tive. This alone would be sufficient to make 
the tale bright and commanding. But we 
have also the adventures of explorers and 
traders, the achievements of missionaries, 
the heroism of martyrs, the wild life of the 
Indian tribes, the scenery of the forest, the 
events of war, the brilliant picture of French 
aristocracy transferred, for purposes of war 
or government or devotion, to the wilds of 
America ; and it cannot be said that the 
writer has proved unequal to the adequate 



132 HISTORICAL WRITING 

treatment of a single one of these so varied 
elements of interest. 

I have devoted nmch space to Mr. Park- 
man as being, next after one or two who 
survived from the preceding period, the most 
conspicuous figure in the American historio- 
graphy of the last twenty-five years, the only 
historian who can fairly be called classical. 
No one can predict the advent of genius, but 
it appears not very likely that the roll of the 
classical historians will be much increased in 
the immediate future, or that the next gener- 
ation will in this respect abound in eminent 
names. Amiel says : — 

" The era of mediocrity in all things is 
commencing. Equality begets uniformity, 
and we divest ourselves of the bad by sacri- 
ficing the eminent, the remarkable, the ex- 
traordinary." 

Such, at any rate, is likely to be the case 
with our historical writing for a long time. 
Nor is it in the main to be regretted. If 
there is not produced among us any work of 
supereminent genius, there will surely be a 
large amount of good second-class work done ; 
that is, of work of the second class in respect 
to purely literary qualities. Now it is the 
spread of thoroughly good second-class work 



IN AMERICA. 133 

— second-class in tliis sense — that our science 
most needs at present; for it sorely needs that 
improvement in technical process, that supe- 
rior finish of workmanship, which a large 
number of works of talent can do more to 
foster than a few works of literary genius. 
If, therefore, that leveled Americanism to- 
ward which M. Renan tells us that the world 
is now progressing is, in the matter of his- 
torical work, to take among us the form 
which we have been supposing, we need not 
lament. We may even hope that out of im- 
proved scholarship may grow in time a supe- 
rior profundity of thought ; for in truth 
profundity of thought has not been among 
the merits of any of our most distinguished 
historians. We may do well to remember 
that, in the historical literature of Europe, 
when the Anakim of the sixteenth century 
were replaced by the mousing but erudite 
BoUandists and Benedictines of the seven- 
teenth and the first half of the eighteenth, it 
was only that the way might be prepared, by 
patient and scholarly accumulation of mate- 
rials, for the advent of a school of historians 
more philosophical and profound than any 
that had preceded. 

But the series of American historians to 

12 



134 HISTORICAL WRITING 

which Motley and Parkman belong was not 
characterized solely by the pursuit, in gen- 
eral, of literary ends. Another distinguish- 
ing mark was its devotion to European rather 
than to American history. In our time the 
devotees of European history are not numer- 
ous in the United States (indeed, if one can 
judge from the contents of our magazines, 
European history is hardly at all a matter 
of interest to most Americans) ; and such 
devotees as there are have not all inherited 
the literary traditions. A few scholars have 
done excellent work in church history, for 
the cultivation of which a special society has 
been formed. Most eminent among these is 
the learned layman whose "History of the 
Inquisition " has reflected so much honor 
upon American scholarship. Almost no 
American has done anything \\^orth while in 
the study of ancient history. This is a strik- 
ing fact, when one thinks of it. The history 
of Rome, especially, offers, one would think, 
much that should interest Americans. There 
is even a similarity of national character ; 
the faces upon Roman busts are such as one 
might see any day in the streets of New 
York or Philadelphia. When one considers 
how large a place the study of the classics 



IN AMERICA. 135 

has long had in American education, one 
cannot help feeling that such lack of interest 
in the history of the classical nations indi- 
cates that the instruction has not been suffi- 
ciently vital. On the other hand, a very 
respectable number of scholars are at work 
in lines of Oriental history. 

Of those who have occupied themselves 
with modern history, some indeed have writ- 
ten with a view mainly to the construction 
of a picturesque narrative ; but mixed with 
these there has been an increasing number 
of workers whose aims have been chiefly 
scientific. An accomplished teacher, with a 
few advanced students, has published essays 
upon Anglo-Saxon law. Several Boston law- 
yers have published important studies in the 
history of English law. Here a historical 
scholar devotes himself to the study of the 
merchant-guild, or meditates the vexed sub- 
ject of early landholding among the Ger- 
mans ; there another illustrates the history 
of the Prussian state. Another labors upon 
the history of sacerdotal celibacy, benefit of 
clergy, ordeal, and wager of battle. All this 
would have seemed very dry to the last gen- 
eration ; but the most judicious of the mod- 
erns see in it a hopeful sign for the future 



186 HISTORICAL WRITING 

of the science, a sign that what work is done 
among us in European history hereafter will 
be, in increasing proportion, solid in con- 
struction and addressed not unsuccessfully 
to superior and specialized intelligence. 

We have been speaking of departments of 
historical work in America upon which the 
war had little effect, and in whose develop- 
ment it could only arbitrarily be taken as a 
dividing point. But with work upon our 
own history, which has occupied an increas- 
ing proportion of our attention, it is other- 
wise. Its character has been profoundly 
affected by that great conflict. Not that we 
have yet had the best that we shall have in 
the way of books on the conflict itself. We 
have had excellent pieces of military history, 
a host of regimental histories and war arti- 
cles. But the books which have attempted 
to deal with its political aspects have been, 
with a few exceptions like that of Mr. Alex- 
ander Stephens, hopelessly unfair, full of 
crude assumption, impervious to argument. 
The remedy for all these things will be the 
coming forward of the younger generation, 
whose motive for studying the war is not 
that of personal participation. 

But the mental effects have extended far 



IN AMERICA. 137 

more widely than this, far more widely than 
the whole field of history, in fact. The lit- 
erature, the art indeed, of the United States 
can never again be like what it was before 
the civil war. It was not simply that the 
government became more firmly consoli- 
dated, the people more closely bound to- 
gether. The nation emerged from that ter- 
rible struggle adult and mature. It was 
able to look upon itself and the world around 
it, its past and its future, at once with more 
sobriety and discrimination, and with a 
heightened self-respect, born of the sense 
that great achievements and sacrifices for 
inspiring causes had vindicated to it a right 
to independent views. Colonial attitudes of 
thought ceased, as colonial attitudes in poli- 
tics had ceased after the war of 1812. Na- 
tional sensitiveness to condescending criti- 
cism from Europeans lost its acuteness ; we 
began to feel, not in vanity, but in sobriety, 
that now we were as worthy as they. We 
began to look at our characteristics and 
modes of life with an externality of view 
unknown to the preceding generation. It 
was possible for the international novelist to 
arise, — that is, the novelist, to whom the 
American is not undoubtedly the greatest of 



138 HISTORICAL WRITING 

all human types, but simply one human type 
among several, all alike to be exhibited with 
intelligent candor. Mr. Howells's voice, 
speaking to the American of forty years 
ago, would have been the voice of one crying 
in the wilderness, — a wilderness of vocifer- 
ous panegyric upon all things American, 
whose very vociferousness betrayed a latent 
uneasiness. The development of our archi- 
tecture, the gradual abandonment of Gothic 
and Renaissance styles for earlier styles, 
plainer, more Roman, more suited to the 
genius of a practical people, is another illus- 
tration. For the first time in our history 
we have become a self-reliant nation. 

In the domain of American history, the 
chano:e has taken effect in two directions or 
modes. In the first place, we have become 
more critical and discriminating, have learned 
more nearly to look upon the course of 
American history with an impartial eye, 
from the standpoint of an outsider. In the 
second place, there has ensued a broadening 
of the field of investigation and work, that 
its scope may correspond to the scheme of 
things in America, to the configuration of 
actual affairs. We are no longer content 
to adopt the same plans of distribution of 



IN AMERICA. 139 

attention to different j^hases of history which 
has seemed proper to European historians. 
Our writers recognize, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, that here the elements of life have 
been mixed in different proportions, and that 
history should conform to these different 
proportions as equally valid and worthy of 
observance. 

To take at once one of the most important 
illustrations of this, one of the most vital 
differences between European history and 
that of the United States. It seems to be a 
fact that the scope of statesmanship, the 
influence of great individuals upon the gen- 
eral life, has been far less extensive here 
than there. It is certain to be so in new 
countries ; in them Nature is supreme. Why 
was it that, while Greece itself was produ- 
cing statesmen, the colonial Greeks of Sicily 
produced none ? Simply because the abun- 
dance of Nature left no field for them. In 
modern Europe the pressure of population 
upon the means of subsistence, and all the 
difficulties which beset the general life wher- 
ever the gifts of Nature are not superabun- 
dant for the needs of man, have raised such 
problems for man to cope with, such tasks 
for the forces of human intelligence, as have 



140 HISTORICAL WRITING 

necessarily evoked great administrative states- 
men. 

But with us it has not been so. Just as 
our national housekeeping has not needed, 
and therefore has not developed, the scien- 
tific financial methods of burdened Europe, 
the vastness of our national resources solv- 
ing of itself every problem, so in general 
Nature has managed for us, and economic 
and other conditions have with peculiar com- 
pleteness shaped our course. The govern- 
mental ideas which have been represented 
by the Straffords, the Richelieus, the Tur- 
gots, the Pitts, the Bismarcks of the old 
world (I do not mean ideas of absolutism, 
but ideas of dominant influence of great in- 
tellects upon national destinies), have been 
alien to America. Once, indeed, the effort 
was made to apply to America the methods 
of European administrative statesmanship). 
That is, if I am not mistaken, the essence 
of the Federalist experiment, more deeply 
its characteristic than any phase of its atti- 
tude towards the American Constitution. 
And why did the Federalist experiment 
break down ? Simply because of those 
forces which the Hebrew war song indicates 
when it declares that the stars in their 



IN AMERICA, 141 

courses fought against Sisera. Nature would 
rule. With the advent of Jeffersonian demo- 
cracy, the reins were thrown upon her neck ; 
and from that time to this the field of in- 
fluence of natural conditions upon our na- 
tional destiny has been peculiarly great, the 
field of influence of great individuals far 
smaller than in the Old World. All this 
imposes upon our historical scholars a duty 
to which they have been far more disposed 
to conform since the attainment of a firmer 
national self-respect. They do not properly 
reflect the life that they seek to reflect if 
they write solely of individual persons or 
groups of persons and their conscious efforts ; 
they must cease blindly to follow European 
schemes, and study economic and natural 
conditions and developments, the unintended 
growth of institutions and modes of life, the 
unconscious movements and changes of 
masses of men. 

That this need of emancipation from the 
traditions and conventions of European his- 
toriography has been making itself felt, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, is plain to any one 
who surveys the historical literature of our 
day. Never was there a time in America 
when so great a proportion of the best his- 



142 HISTORICAL WRITING 

torical work was devoted to the subject of 
the history of institutions and economics. 
One writes of the history of finance ; another, 
of the fortunes of institutions transplanted 
westward, and the genesis of governmen- 
tal ideas among the lawless frontiersmen ; 
another, of the history of cooperation ; still 
another, of movements of migratory popula- 
tion, and the influence of German or other 
national elements absorbed into our mass. 
The magazine writers give us series of ar- 
ticles on colonial manners and customs rather 
than on colonial wars. One writer even 
attempts the difficult task of writing a gen- 
eral history of our people. The historical 
publications of our universities are mostly 
devoted to the history of institutions and 
economics. Forty years ago, a man might 
write on the diplomacy of the American 
Revolution ; nowadays, he is much more 
likely to write on the history of the produce 
exchange, or government land-grants for 
railways, or education. Monographs in the 
field of sociological history or on special 
topics of the history of civilization are the 
characteristic feature of our present histor- 
ical literature. 

One field indeed, whose cultivation would 



IN AMERICA. 143 

naturally go along with these, is not yet 
receiving adequate attention, the study, 
namely, of the thought or inner life of our 
nation, of public opinion, of popular move- 
ments, political and other. It is not that we 
have no one corresponding to M. Renan ; 
for the union of so subtle and profound an 
insight, so delicate and sympathetic an ap- 
preciation, and so exquisite a style, is not to 
be expected in a raw and youthful nation, 
and indeed has scarcely appeared before in 
any nation. But it is a matter of surprise 
that, with the exception of a few such books 
as Mr. Royce's " California," there seems 
but little tendency to the cultivation of that 
branch of history which may best be de- 
scribed as the study of the development of 
national psychology. But perhaps this will 
come in time. 

This has been spoken of as the most im- 
portant tendency of the historical writing of 
America to-day, not because its votaries or 
its productions are numerically in a majority, 
for that may very likely not be the case, but 
because of the belief that it is intrinsically 
the strongest tendency, and has the future 
with it. It is dangerous to prophesy ; but 
there are good reasons why such a prophecy 



144 HISTORICAL WRITING 

may not be too audacious. The history of 
every science is in some degree conditioned 
by the natural course of things in the world 
at large ; but it appears true, and will per- 
haps even have been shown by these papers, 
that this is in a peculiar degree the case 
with the science of history. Views of the 
past, and ways of looking at it, change with 
the changing complexion of the present. 
But it is always found that the actual march 
of affairs is far in advance of its expression 
in literary theory and literary practice. 
Democracy had for some time been estab- 
lished among us before the poetry of demo- 
cracy arose. The world changes, but our 
view of it does not change so fast ; only with 
great effort can it be kept up to date, so to 
speak. Accordingly, it may be possible to 
discern in the face of things at present 
something which may be relied on to shape 
in part the historical science of the imme- 
diate future. Those characteristics of Amer- 
ican existence which have been mentioned 
seem deeply rooted, permanent, essential ; 
therefore it is likely that the adjustment of 
the sphere of our historical writing into con- 
formity with the actual facts, relations, and 
proportions of our national existence will go 



IN AMERICA. 145 

on to still further completeness, and that 
this tendency affords some presage as to its 
predominant qualities in the immediate fu- 
ture, — qualities catholic and philosophical, 
and contributory rather to historical science 
than to historical literature. 

Of course not everything is sharing, or is 
likely to share, in this onward current. In 
particular, the tendencies of many of our 
numerous local historical societies form a 
counter-current, or, better, an eddy, in which 
chips of ancient timber float placidly round 
and round in the same little circle, quite 
unaffected by any general currents whatever. 
Most of them are very useful, and those of 
the West, at any rate, seem to be exceed- 
ingly active. But, with a few bright excep- 
tions, our older historical societies seem a 
little inaccessible to new ideas, and more 
than a little wedded to tradition. The 
thought of touching anything that occurred 
since the Revolution, that is, of having any- 
thing to do with the most important part of 
our history, seems seldom to occur to them. 
Indeed, it is good fortune if the really active 
members are not absorbed exclusively in the 
study of the early voyages and discoveries, 
or of the Indians, the two subjects most re- 

13 



146 HISTORICAL WRITING 

mote from the pi-esent affairs of the United 
States, and therefore great favorites. 

It is not likely that the more popular sort 
of books will change greatly in any short 
time. The voluminous and copiously illus- 
trated county and city histories, with which 
swift and enterprising compilers from time 
to time present us, will probably not be 
much affected. Provided adequate attention 
has been given to the essential parts of their 
work, the advertisements of important in- 
dustries and the engravings of prominent 
citizens, it will not be worth while to alter 
a method which has hitherto served well 
enough the main purpose of such publica- 
tions. Indeed, it is to be expected that a 
large number of even the books of leading 
importance, whose ideas gradually filter into 
the popular books and school text-books, will 
continue to be constructed in accordance with 
the plans traditional to the art. This, pro- 
vided it is not done from mere blindness 
or imperviousness to new ideas, will not be 
regretted. No one quarrels with Mr. Henry 
Adams for confining his brilliant and in- 
structive books mainly to the political and 
constitutional history of the periods which 
they treat, or with Mr. Schouler for a similar 



IN AMERICA. 147 

course. There is still a vast work remaining 
to be done in our political history pure and 
simple. The main object is not the cessation 
of all former varieties of work, but the addi- 
tion of nuQiberless new ones, and the per- 
vasion of all with more modern and catholic 
ideas. 

But now as to the channels through which 
the historical movement of the present time 
goes on, and those likely to be used in the 
immediate future. With but a few excep- 
tions, the local historical societies are not 
likely to be of great use in this way. His- 
torical scholars of a modern spirit are no 
longer much in the habit of using their 
transactions as media of communication with 
the world. The newly founded American 
Historical Association, on the other hand, 
may be put to very good uses. The found- 
ing of that society was a most hopeful sign. 
If adequately supported by the real workers, 
it may prove of signal benefit to the progress 
of the science in the future. The scope of 
its publications is broad and national. Its 
connections with the government will enable 
it to publish still more, and out of it may 
grow a Historical Manuscripts Commission, 
which would be likely to accomplish as much 



148 HISTORICAL WRITING 

for history among us as the prototype has 
accomplished in England. Whether through 
this channel or not, the government will not 
probably much longer delay to engage in 
some scheme of historical publication. Sev- 
eral state governments are now carrying out 
such enterprises. 

Of our few historical magazines, most are 
the organs of one or another of the local 
societies; and of the more general ones it 
is hard to speak with much patience. The 
fault lies mostly with the general public, who 
have not yet begun to care much for good 
historical work. Indeed, for any essay in the 
domain of European history it is scarcely 
possible to think of an}^ American outlet, now 
that our old-fashioned reviews have become 
extinct or worse. As for American history, 
what appears in the historical magazines is 
mostly of a very popular sort ; it is only on 
condition of their maintaining such a com- 
position that the " intelligent public " allows 
them to continue to exist at all. Meanwhile, 
however, the great literary magazines have 
opened their columns to series of good pop- 
ular articles upon colonial or revolutionary 
history, or even the general or the more 
recent history of the United States, the last 



IN AMERICA. 149 

and apparently the most successful of such 
ventures being the war articles of ''The 
Century " magazine. Very likely this indi- 
cates, or may succeed in creating, a more 
general interest in history among the unpro- 
fessional. Meanwhile, the scientific workers 
may find an avenue of publication through 
the hospitable columns of the new " English 
Historical Review," since the prospect of hav- 
ing one of their own is exceedingly remote. 
A method of historical publication much 
in vogue among us at present is that of put- 
ting forth a series of volumes by separate 
authors upon kindred subjects. We have 
had a series of " Campaigns of the Civil 
War," a series of " Lesser Wars of the 
United States," with some others, and, per- 
haps more conspicuous to the public eye, the 
" American Statesmen " series and the series 
on "American Commonwealths." The plan 
has its advantages and its defects. From 
the point of view of the publisher, it is emi- 
nently well-conceived. Greater attention is 
drawn to individual pieces of work when 
thus collected ; greater interest is excited in 
the general subject when a mass of work 
upon it is presented. To some extent, the 
interests of the publishing business and of 



150 HISTORICAL WRITING 

historical scholarship are identical. What- 
ever increases the audience and the influ- 
ence of good work must be welcomed by the 
scholar. But it must not be forgotten — and 
some of the volumes on "American States- 
men " and "American Commonwealths " are 
illustrations of the fact — that, in a series 
of this sort, the good books bolster up the 
poor ones, and gain them a factitious repute 
and power. At the same time, the best 
books suffer from the general average, sel- 
dom acquiring more weight than their frac- 
tion of the collective weight of the series, nor 
as much as might accrue to them as in- 
dependent publications. Another result is, 
that all the kindred subjects therein com- 
prised, however various in many character- 
istics, are bound down to the same uniform 
fullness and style of treatment. If Alex- 
ander Hamilton is to have a volume of three 
hundred pages sextodecimo, so must Gou- 
verneur Morris. Statesman A, whose life 
was spent in executive affairs, may be treated 
differently from Statesman B, who spent his 
life on the bench, but he will not be treated 
with anything like so strong a difference as 
the facts demand. If, as Mr. Bagehot says, 
" the genius of great affairs abhors nicety of 



IN AMERICA. 151 

division," still more does it abhor equality of 
division ; and their treatment should corre- 
spond to their genius. 

It is well worth while to take such consid- 
erations into account in any survey of our 
present state and prospects, because a ten- 
dency to more organization of historical 
work is just now very marked. It is not 
simply a result of that progression towards 
equality, that fading of individual saliency, 
which we have before noted. It is a ten- 
dency peculiarly American. A nation sin- 
gularly devoted to business has transferred 
to the fields of literature and science the 
habits of business management. We edu- 
cate by correspondence, we facilitate literary 
work by ingenious mechanical devices, we 
catalogue and systematize. No nation in 
the world is so addicted to bibliography and 
indexing. The English still, as frequently 
as not, publish books without indexes ; the 
American who does such a thing is at once 
denounced by our reviewers as ripe for any 
atrocity. To say nothing of smaller bibliog- 
raphies, Sabin's great dictionary of "Ameri- 
cana" already extends to about twoscore 
volumes, and will, when completed, embrace 
as many as a hundred thousand titles. 



152 HISTORICAL WRITING 

But we are going further in the organiza- 
tion of historical work, even to the writing 
of histories by organized forces, or by coop- 
eration. An excellent instance is the pre- 
paration of a most extensive history of the 
Pacific Coast by the staff of trained assis- 
tants employed by a wealthy, able, and en- 
thusiastic Californian historian, Mr. H. H. 
Bancroft. Retiring from the publishing 
business with great wealth, Mr. Bancroft has 
employed the energy and the methods of 
a business man in the collection, digestion, 
and presentation of materials. First, a great 
library has been collected, including all ob- 
tainable books bearing at all upon the his- 
tory of Central America, Mexico, California, 
Utah, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska. 
Thousands of Mexican and Californian 
pamphlets have been gathered, and files of 
hundreds of newspapers from all parts of 
the Pacific Coast. Numerous valuable man- 
uscripts have fallen into the collector's 
hands, and enormous masses of manuscript 
copies of state records and mission archives 
have been made specially for the library by 
his secretaries. Old pioneers still surviving 
have been visited, and their recollections 
taken down at great length. A Russian 



IN AMERICA. 153 

assistant was sent to Alaska to copy the 
government records there. Half a dozen 
Spanish ones have done similar work. From 
twelve to twenty accomplished linguists, we 
are told, have been constantly employed in 
Mr. Bancroft's service since 1869. Secre- 
taries have all this time been reading, trans- 
lating, summarizing, cataloguing, and index- 
ing the whole collection. 

The result, attained at the cost of half a 
million dollars, is a mass of systematized in- 
formation, such as must make the users and 
the desirers of historical materials elsewhere 
deeply envious, and for the collection of 
which, under ordinary methods, even an an- 
tediluvian lifetime would scarcely suffice a 
historian. The highest praise must be given 
to the zeal for research, the public spirit, and 
the enterprise and care which have presided 
over the formation of this priceless collection. 
But when it comes to writing history by this 
same method, some reserves are necessarily 
suggested to the mind. Mr. Bancroft has 
prepared from these materials, and pub- 
lished, a gigantic " History of the Pacific 
States of America," in thirty-four unusually 
large volumes. It is obvious that a work of 
such magnitude, carried through in so few 



154 HISTORICAL WRITING 

years, could not possibly be written by a 
single hand. In fact, tlie books were first 
written by the various members of the cohort 
of assistants, and the person whose name 
they bear has simply revised, as a sort of 
managing editor, the productions of this 
highly-organized staff. Valuable as the work 
proves to be, some of the faults of such a 
plan are evident. There can be no fixing of 
responsibility. No one knows whom to crit- 
icise. No one can know whether the au- 
thority of this or that part of the book, or of 
the whole, should be much or little. More- 
over, there is less likelihood, under such a 
system, of the best historical criticism, the 
most skillful sifting of the evidence thus 
elaborately collected. But all this is on the 
supposition that the main object of historical 
composition is correctness of detail, that a 
book is perfect if none of its information is 
erroneous ; a supposition by no means to be 
admitted. To any one who has any concep- 
tion of the use of the higher powers, the 
rarer qualities of the mind, in historical 
composition, it will be plain that no really 
great history can be written by the methods 
of the " literary bureau," by hiring a force 
of assistants and seeing that they do it. It 



IN AMERICA. 155 

may almost be said that the historian, like 
the poet, is born, not made ; but if he is 
made, he is not made by machinery. 

Such dangers as have been above noted 
must always, in greater or less degree, attend 
work prejjared by these or similar methods. 
It is important to observe this, because one 
sees, in this country so devoted to organiza- 
tion, a growing tendency toward the pro- 
duction of historical work in such ways, the 
application to it of the economic principle 
and method of division of labor. A far 
greater amount of work can thus be put 
forth, and, what perhaps is quite as impor- 
tant, can be put forth in such a way as 
greatly to increase its force upon the world ; 
for work so combined and systematized with 
other work is not in clanger of being lost or 
ineffectual, as are, for instance, the disser- 
tations so ingeniously concealed in German 
university and school programmes. But it 
is well to remember that with these advan- 
tages there are some serious drawbacks. 
Good w^ork of the second class, and great 
amounts of it, can thus be done ; good work 
of the first class cannot. The tale of Pega- 
sus in harness has this meaning, that the 
finest qualities of the human mind cannot 



156 HISTORICAL WRITING 

be thus systematized. The highest intellects 
are not at the service of the hirers of clerks, 
are not to be made cogs or wheels in a his- 
tory-producing machine. 

By far the most noteworthy of our co- 
operative histories is the " Narrative and 
Critical History of America," edited by Mr. 
Justin Winsor. With its chapters of his- 
torical narrative by our most learned and 
able historical scholars, each writing upon 
his own special field, and with its critical 
essays upon the sources of information, it 
seems without doubt to be the most impor- 
tant and useful contribution ever yet made 
to American historical science. It splendidly 
sums up the historical labors of a century. 
And, by the way, consisting so largely as it 
does of a bibliographical record of what has 
been done, the proportion between its parts 
affords a striking indication of the relative 
amounts of work which Americans have ex- 
pended on different portions of American 
history. It has taken four volumes to set 
forth the results achieved in our colonial and 
revolutionary history, while a single volume 
is thought to suffice for the period from 
1789 to 1850. Another editor might divide 
the work somewhat differently ; but the fact 



IN AMERICA. 157 

remains that we have expended much more 
labor on the earlier than on the later period 
o£ our history. Perhaps new nations have 
a passion for the study of origins ; or per- 
haps even those who write history enjoy 
an interesting story, and find more such in 
colonial history than in later times. The 
disproportion indicated is a necessary inci- 
dent to the scheme of the work. There are 
also, it should be noted, other limitations 
which must to some extent beset all co- 
operative or monographic histories alike. 
Stretched on the Procrustean bed of uni- 
form requirements in respect to extensiveness 
and general method of treatment, the au- 
thors can present only those things which 
they have in common, — abundant and cor- 
rect information, and acute historical criti- 
cism. Many of the finer qualities of the in- 
dividual mind are likely to evaporate in the 
process ; much of what is most valuable in 
individual views and conceptions of history 
will find no place for itself. No one who 
appreciates these will readily assent to the 
assertion, in the prospectus to the " Narrative 
and Critical History," that, " when the supe- 
riority of the cooperative method is fully 
understood, the individual historian, if he 

14 



158 HISTORICAL WRITING 

ventures fortli at all, will be read for enter- 
tainment rather than profit." 

And now as to the agents by whom his- 
torical science is to be furthered. Here, 
also, the present enables us to judge some- 
what of the future. It is not probable that 
the advance-guard of our army will be led 
by the ruling members of the various local 
historical societies. Nor, on the other hand, 
will much be done by the class of profes- 
sionally literary men. At New York, we 
are assured, there is now a literary centre, 
and in and near it a literary class ; and lest 
the public should lose sight of the fact, each 
of our great magazines has at times an arti- 
cle by some one of the number in which the 
rest are commemorated, each star being cata- 
logued by these prompt astronomers as soon 
as it succeeds in getting at all above the 
horizon. But with these complacent Augus- 
tans, literature appears to be mostly a branch 
of journalism, and history has little to expect 
from them. No doubt their school surpasses 
in breadth and the cosmopolitan quality 
that which forty years ago had its centre in 
Boston, but it is as much inferior in scholar- 
ship as it is in dignity. The local antiqua- 
ries, the professionally literary men, and the 



IN AMERICA. ' 159 

men of wealtli and leisure devoted to study, 
will no doubt continue to write historical 
books. But an increasing proportion of tbe 
annual product now comes from the teachers 
of history in universities and colleges, and 
the signs are that the immediate future be- 
longs to the professorial class. 

The change is more significant than may 
at first be seen. Its meaning will appear if 
we bear in mind that want of early training 
in the technique of historical research and 
composition which has been already spoken 
of as characteristic of American historians 
hitherto. The increasing identification of the 
writing and the teaching classes may be re- 
lied on to remove this obstacle to progress. 
The next generation will have served an 
apprenticeship under men who write ; and 
the superior finish, the improvement in scho- 
larly method, which have been so much 
needed, will be one of the results. Already, 
increasing numbers of special students of 
history are frequenting those universities 
which afford graduate instruction, and if the 
annual production of books and other pub- 
lications giving evidence of scientific train- 
ing and of high ideals of historical scholar- 
ship is still small, it is visibly increasing. 



160 HISTORICAL WRITING IN AMERICA. 

Thus we have traced the development of 
our science from its half-conscious infancy 
down to the present time, and perhaps a 
little way into the future. It cannot truly be 
said that it has yet reached anything like 
maturity, but it is in a vigorous though 
raw adolescence. 



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